October 1, 2002 Committee Hearing: Transportation, INS, DIA, and others

Joint House And Senate Select Intelligence Committee
October 1, 2002

SPEAKER:
U.S. SENATOR BILL GRAHAM (D-FL), CHAIRMAN

LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES:

FRANCIS TAYLOR, COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, STATE DEPARTMENT
CLAUDIO MANNO, ACTING ASSOCIATE UNDERSECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION, FOR INTELLIGENCE, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
JOSEPH GREENE, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
LOUIS ANDRE, SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR INTELLIGENCE, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
JAMES GILMORE, FORMER GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA AND CHAIRMAN, ADVISORY COMMISSION ON DOMESTIC RESPONSES TO, TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, IN 2001
EDWARD NORRIS, COMMISSIONER, BALTIMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT

BODY:

U.S. HOUSE AND SENATE SELECT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEES HOLD
JOINT HEARING ON PRE-9/11 FAILURES

OCTOBER 1, 2002

SPEAKERS:
U.S. SENATOR BOB GRAHAM (D-FL)
CHAIRMAN
U.S. SENATOR CARL LEVIN (D-MI)
U.S. SENATOR JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV (D-WV)
U.S. SENATOR DIANE FEINSTEIN (D-CA)
U.S. SENATOR RON WYDEN (D-OR)
U.S. SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN (D-IL)
U.S. SENATOR EVAN BAYH (D-IN)
U.S. SENATOR JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC)
U.S. SENATOR BARBARA MIKULSKI (D-MD)

U.S. SENATOR RICHARD C. SHELBY (R-AL)
RANKING MEMBER
U.S. SENATOR JON KYL (R-AZ)
U.S. SENATOR JAMES M. INHOFE (R-OK)
U.S. SENATOR ORRIN G. HATCH (R-UT)
U.S. SENATOR PAT ROBERTS (R-KS)
U.S. SENATOR MIKE DEWINE (R-OH)
U.S. SENATOR FRED THOMPSON (R-TN)
U.S. SENATOR RICHARD LUGAR (R-IN)

SPEAKERS:
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE PORTER J. GOSS (R-FL)
CHAIRMAN
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE DOUG BEREUTER (R-NE)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL N. CASTLE (R-DE)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT (R-NY)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JIM GIBBONS (R-NV)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE RAY LAHOOD (R-IL)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE RANDY "DUKE" CUNNINGHAM (R-CA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE PETER HOEKSTRA (R-MI)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE RICHARD BURR (R-NC)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R-GA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TERRY EVERETT (R-AL)

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI (D-CA)
RANKING MEMBER
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE SANFORD BISHOP JR. (D-GA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JANE HARMAN (D-CA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE GARY CONDIT (D-CA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TIM ROEMER (D-IN)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE SILVESTRE REYES (D-TX)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE LEONARD BOSWELL (D-IA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE COLLIN PETERSON (D-MN)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE BUD CRAMER (D-AL)

*

CHAIRMAN: I call to order the joint inquiry of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This is the sixth open hearing by our committees as we consider our joint inquiry into the intelligence community's performance regarding the September 11 tragedies.

During the course of our investigation, we have considered questions about the sharing of information among the major parts of our intelligence community -- the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI -- as well as between law enforcement and the intelligence components, particularly of the FBI.

Today we will focus on several other aspects of information sharing. One is the sharing of information between the principal elements of the intelligence community and a range of federal agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which are important users of intelligence information and which also may generate intelligence information of use to others.

A second issue is the sharing of intelligence information between the federal government and state and local governments, as well as parts of the private sector. We discuss these two issues this morning. We will have a staff report by our staff director, Ms. Eleanor Hill, and then a panel. The panel will include the Honorable James S. Gilmore, III, former governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and chairman of the Advisory Panel to Asses the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction; Ambassador Francis X. Taylor, coordinator for counterterrorism at the Department of State; Mr. Claudio Manno, acting associate undersecretary for intelligence at the Transportation Security Agency; Mr. Joseph P. Greene, assistant commissioner for investigations, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service; Mr. Louis E. Andre, special assistant to the director for intelligence J-2 of the Defense Intelligence Agency; and Edward T. Norris, police commissioner for the City of Baltimore.

Additionally, the committee has received three statements for the record that will not be accompanied by oral testimony. These three statements for the record are by David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States; Rear Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, Acting Director Defense Intelligence Agency; and Dr. Robert C. Norris, Jr., chair Information Operations and Technology Department of the National Defense University.

I ask unanimous consent that each of these statements be made part of the record of this hearing.

(UNKNOWN): So move, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Is there a second?

(UNKNOWN): Second.

CHAIRMAN: Without objection, so ordered.

We greatly appreciate the assistance of the comptroller general, Admiral Jacoby and Dr. Norris provided to this joint inquiry. Members of the committee may submit questions for the record to follow up on matters appropriately addressed to them.

For further opening statements -- Chairman Goss?

GOSS: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

We have had very successful hearings so far in the public, judging from the response we're seeing in the media and on TV and the printed media that this is a value -- what we are doing. And we are very appreciative of our witnesses who are coming forward to help us with our chore of understanding better the consumer side of this and what the needs are at the levels of so many of our agencies who we entrust to do so much important work for the nation in regard to national security.

So I look forward to the hearing and I have no further prepared statement, except gratitude for those who are here with us today.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Goss.

We will commence today with another in the series of excellent presentations by the joint inquiry committee staff. Our staff director, Ms. Eleanor Hill, is now recognized for her report.

HILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Joint Committee.

In prior hearings, we have, as you know, discussed specific -- very specific information sharing issues relating to the performance of the intelligence community prior to the events of September 11.

Today, I will discuss what our review has, to date, uncovered regarding more systemic aspects of information sharing between the agencies of the intelligence community and between those agencies and other federal, state and local entities.

Before addressing the issue of information sharing, however, I would like to first summarize our review of what we have found the non-intelligence community agencies knew about the hijackers.

In short, we have not found any evidence that non-intelligence community agencies had any information prior to September 11 that the 19 individuals who took part in the attacks had terrorist ties. We also found that the non-intelligence community agencies were, for the most part, focused on specific threats to their areas -- their particular areas of responsibility, such as airline hijackings or an individual terrorist crossing the border.

We did not find any significant and sustained focus on a war against Bin Laden in which terrorist operatives might launch multiple attacks against the continental United States using such tactics as airplanes as weapons.

While the FAA, the Customs Service, the State Department and INS each had data concerning the 19 hijackers, that data was not related to their terrorist activities or associations. As a result, none of this information would, by itself, have aroused suspicions regarding a planned terrorist attack within the United States. Instead, these agencies had routine information concerning the vital statistics, travel, immigration and medical status of some of the hijackers. For example, prior to September 11, the FAA had airman records on hijackers Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, Hani Hanjour and Ziad Jarrah. The INS also had records concerning the 19 hijackers, specifically the type of visa and the duration of the stay adjudicated by the immigration officer for each individual.

Finally, U.S. Customs Service officials have advised the staff that they only information Customs had concerning the 19 hijackers prior to September 11 was contained in the routine forms that they filled out when they arrived in the United States.

HILL: Moving on to the general topics of information sharing, during the course of our interviews, intelligence and non-intelligence personnel, alike, complained that a range of political, cultural, jurisdictional, legal and bureaucratic issues are ever present hurdles to information sharing.

Prior to the passage of the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, many suggested that law enforcement information was not adequately shared with the intelligence community. The reverse was also, apparently, true despite amendments to the National Security Act in the 1990s which were designed to make clear that foreign intelligence could be collected for and shared with U.S. law enforcement agencies.

We were told that not all threat information in possession of the intelligence community or law enforcement agencies is necessarily shared with agencies that need it the most in order to counter the threats. For example, the FAA was not provided a copy of the FBI's Phoenix memorandum prior to September 11, 2001, and still did not have a copy two weeks after the matter had become public in early 2002.

In another example, the CIA did not provide the Department of State with large numbers of intelligence reports that included the names of terrorists suspects until shortly after September 11, 2001.

The reasons for this reluctance to share range from a legitimate concern about the protection of intelligence sources and methods to a lack of understanding of the functions of other agencies. The vast majority of the information related to the hijackers or to threats posed by aircraft came to the non-intelligence community agencies from the CIA, the National Security Agency and the FBI. According to officials from the Department of Transportation, State, Energy, Defense and Treasury, unless information in possession of the CIA, NSA and the FBI is shared on a timely basis, they are unable to include dangerous individuals on various watch lists to either deny them entry into the United States or apprehend suspected terrorists while in the United States.

The State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service all maintain watch lists of named individuals. The Federal Aviation Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, INS and other agencies also perform a limited amount of information collection designed to place individuals on watch lists.

The staff review, to date, has found no single agency or database or computer network that integrates all counterterrorism information nationwide. Information about the hijackers and about Al Qaida can be found in disparate databases spread among a range of intelligence and civilian agencies. As exemplified by the Phoenix communication, FBI information related to possible Al Qaida terrorists was often scattered in various regional offices and not shared with the FBI headquarters or with other agencies.

Furthermore, law enforcement, immigration, visa and intelligence information related to the 19 hijackers was not organized in any manner to allow for any one agency to detect terrorism-related trends and patterns in their activities.

Numerous officials stated that there are many hurdles to sharing information. A major issue, for example, relates to the availability of properly clear personnel. Some federal agencies we visited which did not have personnel cleared for sensitive compartmented information -- or SCI data -- advised that they could have benefited from receiving more specific data on potential terrorists. We were also told that many state and local agencies do not have personnel cleared for even the lowest level of access to national security information, let alone SCI access.

As a result, while appropriately cleared FAA, TSA, INS and Department of State officials may receive significant intelligence information, they may be unable to disseminate data within their organization or to state and local officials because the potential recipients are not cleared to receive it.

Another difficulty mentioned repeatedly is the "originator control" or ORCON caveat. Agencies that generate intelligence impose this caveat when disseminating raw and finished intelligence to prohibit further dissemination without their approval. Thus, an agency may receive very important information that could be of use to a third agency that is not a recipient, but may be unable to share it because of the caveat. Although this matter can be resolved through agreed-upon procedures, the process can be lengthy and cumbersome and may not meet the near real time lines often required to track and apprehend terrorist suspects.

We were told that because information sharing is inconsistent and haphazard agencies have tried various means available to them to circumvent the hurdles. These include signed memorandum of agreements with other agencies; the use of detailed employees to other intelligence and law enforcement agencies; participation in joint task forces; and attempts to design and field common databases.

I want to, at this point, just briefly go through what a number of different agencies told us during our staff discussions with them. And I will start with the FAA and the Transportation Security Administration.

Following the hijacking of a TWA aircraft in the Middle East in the mid-1980s, the FAA established a small office, which is now a part of the Transportation Security Administration, to review the incoming intelligence regarding threats to aviation. The intelligence is translated into information circulars, emergency amendments and security directives for the aviation industry.

The circulars and directives are issued to domestic and foreign airlines and to the airports to advise them of current and potential terrorist threats. They are also provided to the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies.

Prior to September 11, the FAA had issued a number of circulars and directives as a direct result of intelligence received from the intelligence community regarding extremist Islamic groups. These FAA publications advised the airlines of the methods that might be used by such groups to hijack an airplane or to plant explosives in airplanes. None, however, has been found that discussed crashing planes into buildings.

The intelligence community is required, by law, to provide the Department of Transportation with intelligence concerning international terrorism. As a result, the department receives intelligence from the CIA, the Department of State, the FBI, the NSA and DIA.

However, Transportation officials advised the staff that they do not believe that they receive all of the available intelligence that is needed to perform their mission. In their view, the agencies that collect the information make decisions on what is relevant for and what should be shared with the Department of Transportation. The issue, reportedly, is one of context and depth of understanding. By not receiving the sum total of the intelligence on all transportation issues, the Transportation Security Administration may not be able to connect events or to link suspicious activities.

TSA officials stated that, although they can submit their requirements to the intelligence community through established procedures, there is nothing that requires the community to collect against those requirements.

Turning to the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- INS -- the INS maintains records on all visitors who arrive in United States. INS officials told the staff that the law enforcement support center -- or the LECS -- in Burlington, Vermont, is a key data sharing center designed to support other law enforcement agencies. The LESC assists in determining the status of detainees or to find persons. INS officials stated that the August 2001 notice to watchlist Nawaf al Hazmi and Kahlid al Mihdhar was not accompanied by any specific notion that indicated that the INS should use all means possible to find these two suspects. INS officials said that had they been told to put highest priority on the search, they would have used the LESC and believe they may have found the two suspects prior to September 11.

The Defense Intelligence Agency -- the director of DIA chairs a standing committee that serves as an integrating mechanism for the Department of Defense. It is called the Military Intelligence Board, or MIB. DCI representatives usually attend and participate in its discussions.

Over time, the MIB has wrestled with information sharing issues prior to September 11. According to DIA representatives, information sharing issues, such as restrictive caveats, handling of information in virtual and collaborative work spaces, limited distribution to senior officials only and support to homeland defense have been discussed by the MIB since at least the mid-1990s. For example, the need to establish an information sharing mechanism was addressed at least as early as February 1995 in the context of multiagency operations in Haiti.

Senior DIA officials told the staff that information sharing issues are not new to the intelligence community and are not limited to the context of September 11. According to them, the basic legal, community, cultural and technological barriers have been understood for years. After the USS Cole attack, the DIA reportedly took significant steps to alter structure, processes, products and policies associated with terrorism analysis. DIA officials advised that the DIA now challenges its analysts to "think out of the box" and to exploit all relevant information, including open-source reporting.

They also stated that DIA has implemented mechanisms that allow more effective receipt and dissemination of critical intelligence information. According to DIA personnel, there have been mixed results with the intelligence community partnerships. For example, the mere act of assigning an analyst to another organization does not always ensure a greater level of access to information or more open sharing of information. DIA acknowledged that its analysts who are detailed to counterpart organizations do not have unfettered and unconditional access to all relevant terrorist information.

Former DIA director, Admiral Thomas Wilson, explained to the staff that information sharing implies that one, quote, "owns the information," close quote, a concept with which he does not agree. According to Wilson, agencies need to change their culture and shed the belief that they "own" the information. The information belongs to the United States government and the entire intelligence community, at least in his view.

Turning to the Department of Treasury -- several Treasury Department components receive intelligence relating to financial matters from the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Officials in Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network -- FinCEN -- and the U.S. Customs Service reported to the staff that they submit intelligence requirements to the intelligence community, but have no assurance that the intelligence will be collected and provided to them on a timely and regular basis.

The Secret Service at Treasury does occupy a unique position because of its primary mission to protect the president. According to the Secret Service, it does receive the intelligence that is necessary for it to perform that particular mission.

Post-September 11, U.S. Customs officials used information available in Treasury databases to develop a comprehensive analysis of the travel, finances and linkages of the hijackers. Specifically, U.S. Custom Service analysts use suspicious activity reports, currency or monetary instrument reports and currency transaction reports obtained from the Treasury Department. Much of the analysis was completed November 2001.

Customs officials advised that the majority of the information used in that analysis to show the domestic and international activities and associations of the hijackers came from law enforcement databases, specifically the Interagency Border Inspection System, or IBIS, and not from intelligence.

According to the Custom Service, there are over 30,000 users of IBIS. But it has no formal connection, apart from the FBI's participation, to the intelligence community.

Turning to the Department of State -- State Department officials advised the staff that at least 1,500 CIA central intelligence reports containing terrorist names were not provided to the TIPOFF watchlisting program until after September 11, 2001. After an analysis of those CIRs was completed, the names of approximately 150 suspected terrorists were identified, and 58 new suspected terrorist names were added to the TIPOFF watchlist.

HILL: State Department officials advised that they have had continuing difficulty obtaining data from for watchlisting purposes from the National Crime Information Center's Interstate Identification Index that is managed by the FBI.

The events of September 11, 2001, have led to an almost universal acknowledgment in the U.S. government of the need for consolidating and streamlining collection, analysis and dissemination of information concerning threats to the United States and its interests. According to the president's national strategy for homeland security, intelligence contributes to every aspect of homeland security and is a vital foundation for the homeland security efforts.

The strategy recognizes that U.S. information technology is the most advanced in the world, but that our information systems have not adequately supported the homeland security mission. According to the strategy, the U.S. government spends about $50 billion per year on information technology, but the systems purchased are not compatible between the agencies of the federal government or with state and local entities.

The strategy acknowledges that legal and cultural barriers often prevent agencies from exchanging and integrating intelligence and other information.

In response to these problems, the strategy first calls for integrating information sharing across the federal government through the Critical Infrastructure Insurance Office. The strategy also calls for integrating information sharing across state and local governments, private industry and among the U.S. citizenry. Using modern information technology, more information is to be shared among various databases.

Finally, the strategy calls for the adoption of standards for information that is an electronic form and is relevant to homeland security. According to the strategy, terrorist-related information from the databases of all government agencies with responsibilities for homeland security is to be integrated. The Department of Justice, the FBI and other federal agencies, as well as numerous state and local law enforcement agencies, will then be able to use data mining tools to apply this information to the homeland security mission.

In recent years, a number of commissions established by the Congress have also reported on the ability of United States to respond to terrorist events and have recommended that steps be taken to encourage closer cooperation between the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

One of the mechanisms established by Congress, the advisory panel to assess domestic response capabilities for terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, looked very closely at the issues relating to the sharing of counterterrorism intelligence with state and local officials. The advisory panel was established in 1999 and was chaired by, then, Governor James Gilmore of Virginia, who will be appearing as a witness here this morning.

The advisory panel issued three reports in 1999, 2000 and 2001. In its first report, the panel reported that state and local officials had expressed a need for more intelligence and for better information sharing among entities at all levels regarding potential terrorist threats. The report dated that, while the panel was acutely aware of the need to protect classified national security information and the sources and methods by which it may have been obtained, it believed more could be done to provide timely information up, down and laterally -- at all levels of government -- to those who need the information to provide effective deterrence, interdiction, protection and response to potential threats.

The panel's second report stated that the potential connection between terrorism originating outside the United States and terrorist acts perpetrated inside the United States means that foreign terrorism may not be easily distinguished from domestic terrorism.

In its third and final report, the panel described the results of a survey it had commissioned that substantiated the view that state and local entities are in need of threat assessments and better intelligence concerning potential terrorist activities.

The promise of the panel throughout its work has been that all terrorist incidents are local, or at least will begin that way. The panel recommended that a federal office for combating terrorism establish a system for providing clearances you state and local officials; and that the FBI implement an analytic concept, similar to the CIA's reports officers, to do a better job of tracking and analyzing terrorism indicators and warnings.

Finally, the General Accounting Office has also completed a number of reports for Congress to focus on combating terrorism, information sharing and homeland security. In addition, GAO's written statement for the record for today's hearing emphasizes the need for a commitment by the leadership of the FBI, CIA and other agencies to transform the law enforcement and intelligence communities and achieve the most effective information sharing possible to combat terrorism.

In summary, the joint inquiry staff believes that much information of great potential utility to the counterterrorism effort already exists in the files and databases of many federal, state and local agencies, as well as in the private sector. However, that information is not always shared or made available in timely and effective ways to those who are in a position to act upon it, add it to their analysis and use it to better accomplish their individual missions.

Our review has found problems in maximizing the flow of relevant information about within the intelligence community, as well as to and from those outside the community.

The reasons for these information disconnects can be, depending on the case, cultural, organizational, human or technological. Comprehensive solutions, while perhaps difficult and costly, must be developed and implemented if we are to maximize our potential for success in the war against terrorism.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Hill, for another excellent staff presentation.

HILL: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN: We will now turn to our panel of distinguished witnesses who were previously introduced. I would like to ask each to take their place at the table.

Each of our committees has adopted a supplemental rule for this joint inquiry that all witnesses shall be sworn. So I would ask our witnesses to rise at this time.

If there is anyone else who might be called upon to testify at this hearing, if they would please rise and take the oath also.

Please raise your right hand.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony that you will give before these committees will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

(UNKNOWN): I do.

(UNKNOWN): I do.

(UNKNOWN): I do.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

The full prepared statements of the witnesses will be placed in the record of these proceedings. I will now call on the witnesses to give their oral remarks in the following order: Governor Gilmore, Ambassador Taylor, Mr. Manno, Mr. Greene, Mr. Andre and Commissioner Norris.

Governor Gilmore?

GILMORE: Mr. Chairman, ranking members, members of this joint commission, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today in my capacity as chairman of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction.

You have, as you've indicated, the written testimony.

Your staff director has given a very able and wonderful summary in which she discussed very much the work of our panel, which has been in existence since the Congress established it by statute back, I believe, in 1998. We began our work in the beginning -- January of 1999.

The panel was certainly initiated by Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, who has a particular concern, particularly about local responders. But the entire Congress -- members of both houses -- uniformly supported the creation of our panel that began work back in 1999.

The mandate was to assess the terrorist threats and potential for attacks targeted against the homeland, here, of the United States. Concern was expressed by the Congress as to whether the country was really willing or was able, really, to respond appropriately if there was an attack, particularly of a weapon of mass destruction.

Your staff director has indicated we have given three reports, by statute, on time, in December of each year. The first, in 1999, was an assessment of the threat and was one that expressed concern about the potential for an attack of a weapon of mass destruction, but indicated, I thought, that it was less likely than a conventional attack, which we thought was very highly likely.

That report and all the other reports and staff work has been staffed by the Rand Corporation at the behest of the Congress. Mike Warmouth (ph) is here today.

Mike, if you would, please, indicate your presence to the members.

He has been staff director, together with others at Rand, and have been very able and helpful to all of us.

The second report built upon the baseline threat, but also indicated some very important policy conclusions in the year 2000. One was that there was a need for a comprehensive national strategy -- that a national strategy was necessary to begin to prepare for the very high likelihood that some major terrorist attack would occur on the homeland.

The recommendation was not for a federal strategy and remains not for a federal strategy. The recommendation is for a national strategy, and that means the inclusion of federal, state and local elements in the creation of the national strategy.

Second of all, we recommended that there be an improved structure for the ability to coordinate and establish that national strategy. We recommended a national office of homeland security and, of course, that later became a Ridge Office of Homeland Security.

We also recommended, by the way, that office be given significant authority, particularly budget certification authority in order to enable it to do the coordination work. But also we recommended it be Senate-confirmable, and that way we would pull everybody together.

The third report builds on the first two and focuses detailed work in the areas of border security; the use of states and locals, particularly; the health community -- in preparation against an attack on bioterrorism; the use of the military, which has been a fundamental concern of our commission because, obviously, of its civil liberties implications -- and so it has to be very carefully handled; and then, finally, cyber terrorism.

And that gives you the background.

Mr. Chairman, with respect to the issue you have asked us to come speak to you on today, as the staff director indicated, throughout our three reports we indicated concern about the issue of intelligence and intelligence gathering.

I might mention, Mr. Chairman, that our commission was due, by statute, for three years and was to go out of business in December of 2001. Following the 9/11 attacks, this Congress extended the commission. We were extended for two years. We remain an advisor to both bodies of this Congress and available. And we will be issuing additional reports in December of this year and, of course, next year, as well, for the fifth year of our commission.

With respect to intelligence and sharing of information, are concern has been expressed continuously over the life of this commission. We did a survey, particularly of state and local agencies -- a very large survey. Over 1,000 survey questionnaires were sent. Almost complete response -- almost a uniform response across the country to our commission and we learned a great deal and it allowed us to have what I believe to be a good national perspective.

First and foremost, our commission has expressed concern about the lacking of mechanisms to effectively analyze and share intelligence information horizontally across the federal structure -- CIA, FBI, NSA, not to mention the non-intelligence organizations your staff director has so eloquently talked about this morning -- the ability to share that information across the federal areas.

And that, of course, is an impediment because of culture and because of turf concerns, which we have identified. In other words, there has, up to this point, not been an ability to draw this information together from disparate intelligence organizations and to do what so many people have said in the last some number of months, the ability to connect the dots. It just hasn't been there because of this difficulty.

But the second point is equally as important and the least discussed. And it is the concern that we have expressed about the inability to share information not just horizontally, but vertically -- up and down the line -- federal, state and local -- the inability to share information with governors -- the inability to share information with state emergency operations people -- state police -- localities -- police chiefs -- fire commissioners -- fire chiefs -- health care community people -- emergency operations organizations. This is just as important as the horizontal focus that has been so key to the Congress.

Our studies have indicated that, to the extent that there has been intelligence sharing, it has been ad hoc -- it has been without a real systematic approach. And what would you expect?

CHAIRMAN: With the intelligence community, it is absolutely within the culture, if not within the statute that you don't (ph) share information. If you do, you're even subject to criminal penalties, not to mention the danger of sharing information and to the danger of people who provided it -- and the capacities of the United States in order to gather it. These are the fundamentals.

But these things must be overcome by an appropriate system of sharing information, clearing people, training, exercising and establishing so the people who need the information can, in fact, get it.

There is a lack of an overarching strategic approach on this matter up to this point.

Now, I will close, Mr. Chairman, I just saying that we also should point out that a lot has gone right -- not just gone wrong, but a lot has gone right. September 11 demonstrated that our citizens arose in a very brave way. Our local responders, who will almost always be the first people on the scene, performed heroically in Virginia and in New York. I was governor of the state at the time that Virginia was attacked -- at the time of the Pentagon attack. I was well aware of all of that. I visited people in the hospitals. I visited our state troopers and awarded them because of their good work. And we have a lot to say about that.

The last point I will make, Mr. Chairman, is this -- we are a free and an open society. That is what we are -- that's what makes us Americans. Therefore, we will always be at some level of risk. The challenge that we face is sharing information, establishing a national strategy and putting together the systems necessary to make this country safer while simultaneously, and the same time, in protecting our freedoms and our values that make us Americans.

Our commission believes that we can share information -- create it and share it with relevant stakeholders without impinging upon any of these American values.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Governor.

Ambassador Taylor?

TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am proud to be here this morning to represent the State Department to have the opportunity to discuss this very important and vital issue in America's efforts to combat threats to our society from terrorism.

Information intelligence is a key weapon in the global war on terrorism. Having timely and accurate intelligence is essential to disrupt terrorist activity and to dismantle terrorist infrastructure.

Mr. Chairman, as you mentioned, I have a detailed statement for the record. And I would like to just briefly summarize my remarks in that statement.

I would start by indicating my great respect for the men and women of the intelligence and law enforcement community of our nation and the tremendous work they're doing on the front lines of this battle against terrorism. And certainly their efforts should not, in any way, be diminished by our inability, so far, to perhaps exchange that information more effectively.

They are fighting America's wars today and are fighting it very effectively.

The Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism -- the office I'm privileged to lead -- as the responsibility for coordinating the international counterterrorism policy with the U.S. government and our foreign governments around the world.

We are a major intelligence consumer, rather than a producer of intelligence. Our mission depends on timely and efficient flow of information on terrorism and terrorist threats. It also depends on an open relationship with our international partners in the exchange of intelligence information that is so vital in helping them to assist us in the global war on terrorism.

I want to emphasize that our department has committed itself, under (ph) our (ph) secretary (ph), and working aggressively with our fellow agencies and international partners to make sure that that information is exchanged that allows us detect, deter and disrupt terrorist activities around the world.

Responding specifically to the questions the committee has asked, Mr. Chairman, the State Department and its overseas posts are integrated both into the classified and unclassified electronic communications networks used by federal intelligence agencies. The State Department both receives and transmits information on terrorism directly through those channels.

Our bureau of intelligence and research receives terrorism- related sensitive classified information through intelligence community components.

In 1987, the State Department established the TIPOFF program for the purposes of using biographic information drawn from intelligence products for watch listing purposes. In 1993, we established the Visas Viper program at the dedicated telegraphic channel for reporting information on known and suspected terrorists directly off the TIPOFF database. The Viper channel is used both by our post overseas and by intelligence agency headquarters in Washington. And it can accommodate multiple addresses to facilitate information sharing among its users.

Our Bureau of Consular Affairs receives basic biographic data directly from the FBI's criminal databases, some of which might include information about terrorists, and feeds that information into our Consular Lookout and Support System. We call it CLASS. All consular officers adjudicating visa applications overseas run checks against that system before a visa is issued.

Our Bureau of Diplomatic Security receives information from a variety of sources domestically and from federal and local law enforcement agencies. Overseas, information is acquired from host governments or other U.S. government sources at our missions abroad. Once received, diplomatic security forwards this information for inclusion in TIPOFF or in the CLASS system.

With regard to interagency groups, the State Department participates in a wide variety of interagency organizations and task forces. A few examples -- the Bureau of Consular Affairs is represented on the FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research represents the department on the Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism. The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is a member of 19 of the FBI's regional joint terrorism task forces and a member of the headquarters joint terrorism task force.

The department is also integrated into a number of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, including INTERPOL, the DCI's Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism and the DCI's Counterterrorism Center in the Office of Homeland Security.

My office hosts liaison officers from both the CIA and the FBI International Terrorism Operations Section.

As we turn to information technology, terrorism related information, especially that used for watchlisting terrorists, is shared within and without the State Department through a variety of electronic media. For example, the department's TIPOFF watchlist program of 85,000 names receives information electronically and feeds it directly into the CLASS system, which is checked by consular officers worldwide.

Under the terms of a 1991 MOU approved by the intelligence and law enforcement community, that information is also entered into the Interagency Border Inspection System -- IBIS -- for use by U.S. Immigration and Customs officers at ports of entry.

In August 2002, the entire TIPOFF database, including full biographic records on nearly 85,000 terrorist names, photographs, fingerprints and online source documentation, was made available on CT-LINK -- counterterrorism link -- to authorize users from five intelligence community and law enforcement agencies.

The State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research manages Web pages available to other members of the intelligence community on to Web sites -- one classified at the secret level, the other at the top-secret level.

The State Department's Bureau for Consular Affairs is an innovator in the use of advanced information technology to make the visa lookout information, including terrorist lookout, available to consular officers around the world on a real time basis.

Consistent with the requirements of the USA PATRIOT Act, more than seven million names of persons within the FBI's criminal and other name retrieval records were added to the CLASS system by August 2002, augmenting the more than 5.8 million names records from state, INS, DEA and intelligence sources contained in that system.

With regard to state and local cooperation, the Department of State understands the benefits of integrating state and local enforcement agencies into its counterterrorism activities in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. The Bureau of Diplomatic Security has 21 offices in the United States, having liaison responsibility with state and local law enforcement on a variety of law enforcement issues.

Currently, discussions are underway with the FBI which will permit a portion of the TIPOFF database to be placed in the National Crime Information Center's violent gangs and terrorist organizations file for access by local law enforcement on a real time basis.

When we look at legal questions that affect our ability to exchange information, clearly there were, before the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, impediments to the sharing of law enforcement data within our TIPOFF and CLASS system. The PATRIOT Act has made significant improvements in the exchange of that information.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, we believe the free flow of information regarding terrorism within the department and between the department and other agencies of our government, both federal, state and local, is absolutely the most important thing we can do.

While the flow of information has not always been unfettered, we see no institutional or organizational cultural impediments to information sharing that cannot be successfully resolved.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my overview of the testimony. At the conclusion, I would be happy to answer your questions.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador.

Mr. Manno?

MANNO: Mr. Chairman and members of the select committee, I am pleased to represent the Department of Transportation and participate in your joint inquiry into the performance of the intelligence community concerning the events of September 11, 2001 -- the terrorist attacks against United States.

My full statement addresses the questions posed in your letter of invitation. And I would respectfully request that in the entered into the record. I would also like to verbally summarize the points made in my presentation.

CHAIRMAN: Mr. Manno, your statement, as well as the statements that have been submitted by all of the members of the panel, will be part of the record of our hearing.

MANNO: Yes, sir. Thank you.

I believe a component of your inquiry is to look at the policies and procedures in place at the department to receive and act on intelligence information from the intelligence community and law enforcement organizations concerning terrorism.

It is helpful to look at this issue first in terms of how terrorism intelligence flows from the producer agencies of the intelligence community to the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration.

The second part of the process concerns how the information from the intelligence community is passed to the private sector, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies.

The mechanisms for passing information by the intelligence community to DOT are well-established. DOT identifies and updates its intelligence needs in detailed statements of intelligence interest. The producer agencies use these to determine which products DOT may receive.

To help ensure that the intelligence community agencies share pertinent intelligence with the department, the Aviation Security Improvement Act of 1990 required, quote, "the agency of the intelligence community to ensure that intelligence reports concerning international terrorism are made available to the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration," end quote.

The agencies responsible for producing most of the intelligence that we receive are the CIA, the Department of State, FBI, NSA and DIA.

In addition, the department is active in a number of national counterterrorism and law enforcement community efforts, by virtue of its relationship with these agencies.

A full-time liaison officer from CIA is posted to the secretary's Office of Intelligence and Security and that office established a part-time liaison position at FBI. The FAA also has provided liaison officer to the National Infrastructure Protection Center -- the NIPC -- at FBI.

TSA's Transportation Security Intelligence Service maintains full-time liaison officers at the FBI headquarters in the newly created National Joint Terrorism Task Force; the CIA's Counterterrorism Center; the State Department Office of Intelligence and Threat Analysis. We also plan to post liaison officers in the near future at NSA and DIA, as well as the Office of Homeland Security.

Liaison initiatives are also underway to assign TSA personnel to FBI joint terrorism task forces throughout the country. TSA is currently identifying which task forces around the country would be best suited for TSA participation.

And TSIS officers detailed to the State Department, CIA and the FBI meet the same high personal and professional standards as the regular employees of these agencies.

MANNO: Accordingly, they are fully integrated into these agencies and have the same access and restrictions as the agency's own employees, based on the "need to know" principle and the requirement to protect intelligence and law enforcement sources and methods.

Historically, where the department has had issues with this arrangement is in the definitions used by these agencies as to what constitutes "need to know." For example, Specific threat information may be routinely shared, whereas domestically acquired non-threat information, such as terrorist group presence and capabilities needed to evaluate threat information, is provided less often because it is considered investigative material, rather than intelligence.

Unlike CIA, DOD and the State Department, the FBI has not, historically, considered itself an intelligence production agency due to the statutory restrictions on the dissemination of information it collects in its investigative role.

The department has experienced no significant intelligence sharing problems with state or DOD. With respect to CIA, those few times where we have had problems, those resulted from unfamiliarity, on the part of CIA personnel, with our mission, roles and responsibilities.

On a daily basis, the department receives a steady stream of raw reporting and finished intelligence from State Department, CIA and DOD. This flow includes items that are sent electronically; hardcopy products received via courier and cables; and finished intelligence that we can access via community databases. From this inflow, the analysts on our intelligence watch identify on the average of 100 or 200 cables, reports, hardcopy products, faxes and e-mails each day that merit a closer review by us.

Up to now, we have not received a similar daily flow of raw reports and finished intelligence from FBI. We have received, however, summary general intelligence on terrorist groups in the U.S. and an assessment on the threat these groups pose to domestic airports and air carriers.

In addition, we occasionally receive cables regarding potential threats to transportation or a response to a detailed question or a request for assessment that we may have posed through our liaison officers assigned there.

Like other federal agencies, we also receive the FBI's classified terrorist threat warning notices, other alerts and the FBI's annual summary report of terrorism in the United States. We expect, however, that the flow of raw background reporting from FBI will increase in the future program. From the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 authorized the sharing of criminal investigative information with other federal agencies in matters of foreign intelligence encounter intelligence, amending previous laws that prohibited the FBI from sharing Grand Jury and FISA information. So we think that this will be helpful.

The process of getting intelligence from the department into the hands of those that need it at the operational level, both state and local law enforcement and the affected parties in the private sector has been accomplished primarily through the preparation and issuance of written notifications, such have information circulars and security directives.

As appropriate, strategic assessments of the terrorist threat are also disseminated to provide a general overview of the threat environment. Law enforcement officers responsible for security at airports have access to our notices, which are transmitted to them via the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, or ALEAN. This information is provided as a sensitive security information, which in most cases consists of a declassified version of originally classified information.

The declassified versions are prepared with the assistance and cooperation of the originating agencies. Regulated entities, such a air carriers and airports, receive the notices directly.

In the case of security directives, the threat information is coupled with mandatory security countermeasures that the air carriers and airport authorities must carry out. For example, watchlisted names are provided to airlines via this process. The information is available to individual airline checking agents in either manual or automated form, depending on the specific airline.

In addition to communicating threat information concerning aviation security via written notices, TSA's 24-hour intelligence watch alerts industry representatives to events of potential interest that would not necessarily result in the issuance of written notification. The watch sometimes relays pertinent information that could not be declassified to properly cleared industry representatives.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, we, at the Department of Transportation, recognize the significance of your efforts on behalf of the American people. And we appreciate the opportunity to participate in these proceedings.

I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Manno.

Mr. Greene?

GREENE: I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of the committee, for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the INS concerning information and intelligence sharing within the federal government and between federal, state and local agencies.

INS sees its function in the war against terrorism in two distinct areas -- an external role of safeguarding the borders of United States against the entry of terrorists and their supporters and an internal role of identifying, locating, apprehending and deporting aliens who pose a threat to the domestic security of United States or aliens who offer support and assistance to those who might pose such a threat.

I can report to the joint committee that since the terrorist attacks on the United States, intelligence sharing and its application in our work has increased dramatically. Nevertheless, we also recognize that the process of improving intelligence sharing and joint cooperation in its use is continuous and demands constant commitment on the part of all of the agencies involved.

Regarding our work in safeguarding borders, new cooperation between the INS and the Department of State now permits immigration inspectors to assess visa application data during the primary inspection process. These data give inspectors new tools in testing the statements made by an applicant for admission against statements made to consular officers when applying for the visa.

In addition, over the past year, the use of the Interagency Border Inspection System -- IBIS -- has been improved with new lookout information, as Ambassador Taylor has indicated. And the INS has expanded the use of that system to include not only applicants for admission into the United States, but also applicants for benefits under the relevant immigration laws.

The most significant changes in information sharing since the attacks have occurred, however, in our internal or domestic role.

Last month, INS began the phased implementation of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System -- NSEERS. Initially, under this system INS is requiring the fingerprinting and photographing on arrival of individuals who might pose a potential national security risk to United States. In addition, these people are required to register periodically with the INS, allowing us to better verify that they are complying with the conditions of their non-immigrant status.

INS has begun to deploy the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System -- SEVIS -- an Internet-based system that will greatly improve our ability to track and monitor foreign students. This system will greatly enhance our ability to detect those who seek to abuse or exploit our educational and training institutions or unlawful or injurious purposes.

INS special agents have participated in the joint terrorism task forces around the country since 1996. Since the attacks, INS and FBI agents have conducted almost 6,500 joint interviews in connection with the investigation of the attacks, themselves, or with related counterterrorism investigations. These interviews have resulted in the arrest of over 526 immigration violators solely on the grounds of immigration law violations in addition to other arrest in connection with investigation, itself.

Finally, a word about INS cooperation and information sharing with state and local law enforcement agencies -- the principal vehicle of the INS for information sharing with local law enforcement has been the Law Enforcement Support Center, as Ms. Hill indicated. The Law Enforcement Support Center provides real-time information from INS databases to police officers across the country. In 46 states, the process of querying INS databases is an automated function of the record checks local law enforcement officers routinely conduct. The LESC is past 24 hours a day, seven days a week and provides local police officers with the ability to talk directly to an INS law enforcement technician or special agent about the facts surrounding a specific person in custody.

Furthermore, in August, INS entered into a written agreement with state of Florida, under which 35 local law enforcement agencies assigned to regional domestic security task forces in that state were trained in immigration law enforcement and certified to enforce immigration law in connection with their domestic security duties. We are currently engaged in discussions with several other states and localities, exploring the possibilities of similar arrangements. These designs significantly increase the level of effective cooperation between the INS state and local law enforcement officials.

While we recognize that significant progress has been made in intelligence sharing and in improving the connectivity between different agencies charged with domestic security law enforcement, we also recognize that still more needs to be done. INS is firmly committed to that effort.

We look forward to working with you and the Congress, as a whole, to increase our domestic security and safety to the level demanded and deserved by our people.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to take your questions at the end of the statement.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Greene.

Mr. Andre?

ANDRE: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I welcome the opportunity to participate in today's hearing. Thank you very much for the invitation.

The topic of information sharing is one of exceptional importance and one upon which DIA has focused considerable and specific attention over the past year-and-a-half. Within this topic lies several of the keys to revamping and improving our performance in the war on terrorism.

Within a month of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, in October 2000, DIA took a number of steps to enhance its ability to provide timely, actionable terrorism threat intelligence the Department of Defense equities worldwide.

The result of those steps is embodied in the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism. This reorganization and, more importantly, process re-engineering was based on two fundamental and deeply held beliefs -- both have to do with today's topic of information sharing.

The first of these beliefs is that the all source analysis component of the intelligence community, if provided access to a broader base of information, can make a greater contribution to the counterterrorism mission.

The second belief is that there are, indeed, significant amounts of information relevant to the terrorist threat that remain under- tapped, underutilized and/or not subjected to sufficient analytic scrutiny.

We believed those two things in the immediate aftermath of the USS Cole attack. And we believe them today.

There are a variety of reasons why large volumes of information remains under-exploited. Among the most common are strict compartmentation due to source sensitivity; narrow interpretation of laws or executive orders; misunderstanding or incomplete understanding of one another's missions and requirements; or a too narrow view of what does and what does not constitute terrorism-related information.

I would like to expand a little on this last point -- the too narrow view of terrorism information. I think it has particular relevance to today's proceedings.

I believe we have to redefine and significantly broaden the term "human intelligence collection" when it comes to terrorism intelligence. For example, looking within the Department of Defense, our military security and investigative component -- our military police, special agents, gate guards and the like -- are not intelligence collectors. But they do gather, and not always disseminate, considerable amounts of information they deem to be of little or no interest beyond localized security or criminal concerns.

However, this type of information -- stolen credentials and identification; attempts to breach security; robberies; license plate thefts; bribery; or even corruption -- when put in the larger context by insightful analysts equipped with the tools, holds promise of additional terrorism analysis successes. Terrorist activity is, by its very nature, criminal activity.

In our search for relevant information, the signal event or the dot that needs to be connected, we must cast a much wider net and then more rigorously mine, examine and interpret the take.

There are no insurmountable legal, security or technical obstacles to significantly expanding the base of information available to our terrorism analysts. Progress is being made. As noted, the DIA has made considerable investments designed to optimizing its ability to receive, store and fully exploit a wide range of new information.

In my opinion, one of the most prolonged and troubling trends in the intelligence community is the degree to which analysts, while being expected to incorporate all sources of information into their assessments, have been systematically separated from the raw material of their trade. How does happen? A combination of large, analytic workforce drawdowns in the early '90s and voluminous streams of collected data led to a need for more, quote, "front end," unquote, filtering, packaging and productizing of raw data.

ANDRE: Thus, the interpretive function determining relevance, importance and meaning of the raw data, moved further inside the organizations that collected the data in the first place. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

And I have great respect for those in the processing and exploitation arena who labor to separate the nuggets from the noise, to rationalize the irrational and to add value. Theirs is an indispensable function.

However, when our so-called all source analysts are put in the position of basing important judgments on some sources of information or already interpreted sources of information, that is a bad thing. In the area of terrorism analysis, it can be a tragic thing.

At least for a few highly complex, high-stakes issues, such as terrorism, where information by its nature is fragmentary, ambiguous and episodic, we need to find ways to emphatically the "all" back in the discipline of all source analysis.

While this is an exceptionally simple concept, I am under no illusions that implementing it will be easy or painless. We will need your help and support to pull that off.

I thank you in advance for that support.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Andre.

Commissioner Norris?

MIKULSKI: Mr. Chairman, may I exercise...

CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MIKULSKI: ... a personal privilege?

CHAIRMAN: Senator Mikulski?

MIKULSKI: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I am so delighted that the committee asked Commissioner Norris to come and testify today. This is one of, really, three testimonies he's given on the topic of homeland security. And he brings a very incredible background as both a police officer and in the command and leadership position, serving also in New York and, most recently, the significant experiences we've had in Baltimore. And we're part of the Capitol Region. And I believe his testimony will be very complimentary to Governor Gilmore's in terms of our first responders and the people on the front lines.

So I am just delighted that the committee has chosen one of the best of the best to present a testimony.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator.

Commissioner, it doesn't get any better than that.

NORRIS: Sure doesn't!

(LAUGHTER)

Is this televised?

(LAUGHTER)

NORRIS: Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me. This is my third time testifying, actually, as Albany -- Senator's remarks. I would like to decline to read my written testimony. It has been submitted for the record, obviously.

But, rather, I would prefer to share a couple of stories that are going on right now in Baltimore, which, as you know, is a mid-sized American city. And I would just like to talk about some of the problems we are encountering at the ground level that are -- I think it's -- I chosen to do this because after hearing all the testimony from Governor Gilmore on, I think it kind of underscores the problems we are facing at the very local level. Because if, indeed, the federal government says there is a 100 percent chance we will be hit again, and, as we've heard from the previous testimony, it is going to be a local response, of course, we are still encountering difficulties defending our cities, despite the improvements may.

And I would just like to talk about a few of them that people may or may not know about. All of the ones I've talked about -- I can now because they've been out in the public -- in the press. I will just leave out names and addresses if they are pending investigations.

One of the things I found rather chilling is something that happened on September 10. And I would have to go back to my experience with New York City police, about 12 years ago because there are striking similarities in both the findings and the response.

On November 5th of 1990, I was a lieutenant with the New York City Police Department. And, as we all know now, there was an assassination of a radical Jewish leader in the Marriott hotel on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

After he was killed, the assassin ran out of the ballroom onto Lexington Avenue, jumped in a Yellow taxicab, jumped immediately out -- was confused -- encountered a police officer, who he shot -- was shot -- and returned fire and wounded at the scene where we had our arrest of our murderer.

Going through his pockets and his papers, obviously, we found out where he lived. Upon arriving at his house, we found another gentleman, also, I believe, from Egypt, who answered the door. And what did you think they did for a living? They were New York City cab drivers, who admit being at the scene at the time of the homicide.

So pretty clear, obviously, that he jumped in the wrong taxi.

We did a search warrant of the house and in the war we came up with huge, voluminous -- according to sources I've spoken to it is the biggest Al Qaida seizure on American soil, still. And there were photographs of New York City landmarks; writings in Arabic and Farsi; diagrams and notebooks and the like.

And all of these things were seized by us and the New York City police and brought back to my office.

The next day, of course, we give a briefing to our superiors. The question that was posed to me and my detectives was, "Can you tell me this man acted alone -- a lone gunman?" to which the response was, "Of course not. He at least had two other people with him -- were the, you know, the giveaway drivers."

We were told, "You shut up. You handle the murder. They handle the conspiracy." -- "they" being the Joint Terrorism Task Force. So, from that day on, our files were turned over -- cases when in different directions. We handled the murder, they handled the terrorism investigation.

Almost two years later, there was an explosion at the World Trade Center. I was summoned back to listen to tapes, review documents and the like, only to find out that those documents that we turned over were not translated until midway through the bombing trial of the first Trade Center. The people that I released from my office -- one of them actually drove the van into the World Trade Center in '93. And it's bothered me for a long time. It is now a subject of the books, so we can talk about this publicly.

I bring this up because on September 10 of this year, in our city -- in Baltimore, my detectives were out on a routine arson warrant. They find the subject who they are going to arrest for an arson and a harassment and in the apartment, they encounter eight men from various countries -- from Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

The apartment is very sparsely furnished -- hardly any furniture, but there are computers and documents -- passports and the like that do not belong to them -- people with different names and photographs. There are also photographs of some landmarks, like Union Station in Washington D.C., Times Square in New York. There are also computers that we seize and cell phones.

We got a search warrant for these. They were downloaded by our police department. And in there, we find that in the week preceding September 10, which we have got to keep in mind that is the day we are told we are at a very high state of alert, we find that they were on the Internet for hours at a time in the middle of the night, checking out Web sites such as learnedtofly.com, beapilot.com -- all local airports and the like.

Further, analysis of their hard drive that was erased shows photographs of jetliners and many other things.

The reason we bring this up now is I don't know what these men have or have not done, other than what I have told you. The investigation continues. But several were released by the federal government that day. And until then, not only that -- the worst that we were told that there is nothing more than expired visa violations of these folks. And there is nothing to indicate an existence of a terrorist cell.

Well, that may be true on its face. I mean if they're waiting for notarized plan with a list of terrorists, it's going to be a long wait.

This is chillingly, eerily similar to what we encountered years ago and encountered here and there through our daily work as police officers in this country. And to be told this by our federal partners is very disturbing to us.

And that's where we stand right now. That investigation continues. And there are a couple of more anecdotal ones I would like to share with you just as part of what had happened in the year since September 11 to date.

We had two men on September 11th of 2001 -- the day this country was attacked -- who were seen celebrating the World Trade Center attacks by a deliveryman smart enough to call the police. We apprehended -- we went and can talk to him -- brought them in for questioning. They were subsequently released, I believe, by the FBI. There was no evidence to hold them at the time, which may have been the case.

June of this year, we were notified and asked for our help very quickly to please apprehend someone. We ran him through our intelligence division database and, of course, it was one of the people from that night. The point of that little story is the fact that we had no idea that there was an impending investigation of these folks who live in my city.

We also had, as you probably know by now, on June 24, Rasmi Al- Shannaq was arrested on Leehigh (ph) Street in Baltimore. He was a previous roommate with Hani Hanjour and Nawaq al Hazmi, the September 11 hijackers. We were notified of this investigation three days before it was taken down.

We have -- this is the one that I really would like to bring to everyone's attention -- we have a very competent intelligence division in our department, as most major city police departments. We run our own investigations. And we run them pretty well. But we also check with our federal counterparts to make sure we are not wasting resources and disrupting anybody else's work.

We have someone now who we are investigating -- he's a rather radical in our city. We asked our counterparts, "Do you have anything going on this?" And, of course, were told, "Absolutely not."

We continued with the investigation and there was a blind hidden (ph) one (ph) database that alerted them to the fact we're still investigating this subject, at which time we were notified and said, "Could we come talk to you? The person we said we're not investigating, we actually are investigating and we need to come talk to you about it. But we couldn't really tell you at the time."

There are others, but that's enough for now. I just wanted -- statement I would like to make -- and the fact is I don't -- I'm representing myself. I don't represent the majors and chiefs of the ISEP (ph). But there are several vocal chiefs in this country who feel the same way. Unfortunately, most of them complain privately. And when they are asked publicly, they don't want to say anything for what reason is only known to them.

But if we're talking about this as a local response, and there is a need to know, who do we think needs to know more than the chiefs who protect the city's citizens? We need to know more than anybody in this country what is going on in our cities, yet, we don't.

And I defy anybody -- you can call people today from any major American city to ask them what is going on in their cities regarding terrorism investigations today and I think you would be surprised at the response.

I think I'm going to stop there and answer any questions you may have for me, Senator.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Commissioner, for a very illuminating set of comments.

We have followed a pattern with these hearings of designating four of our members to be the lead questioners -- two from the House -- to from the Senate. Of each of the questioners will have 20 minutes.

The designated lead questioners for today are Senator Wyden, Representative Hoekstra, Senator Shelby and Representative Bishop.

Representative Bishop has indicated to me that he is about to manage a bill on the House floor and with the consent of Senator Wyden, he will be called upon first so that he can complete this questioning and meet his other responsibilities.

Congressman Bishop?

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chairman, if I may, after the four lead questioners, would it be your intention to reassess for lunch?

CHAIRMAN: If the four lead questioners all take their full-time, that would put us at approximately 1:00 or closer thereto. So, yes, it would be my expectation that we do the lead questioners, break for lunch, reconvene at 2:30.

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chairman there is a vote at 12:15.

CHAIRMAN: Well, then we'll have to -- the senators, then, will have to leave to accommodate that.

Congressman Bishop?

BISHOP: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

And let me thank all of our panelists for bringing very, very illuminating testimony to us this morning.

And let me just begin by saying that the joint inquiry has established a number of things, including that the CIA and that NSA possessed critically important information on two of the hijackers -- Mihdhar and Hazmi -- that was buried within the CIA's raw operations cables and the NSA's raw intercepts.

Almost no one outside of these agencies was allowed to access these databases of raw human and signals intelligence. The CIA and NSA analysts either did not see this information, or concluded that it did not reach internal thresholds for reporting or did not appreciate the needs of other agencies for that information.

Thus, critical information lay dormant for -- in the most basic intelligence databases over a period approaching two years.

I mentioned a moment ago that counterterrorism analysts outside CIA and NSA cannot access the databases. That is still true today. DOD, FBI, FAA, INS, State Department -- none of the analysts at these agencies get to examine the information in these databases.

I am sure it will come as a shock to the public and even members of this joint inquiry that even the proposed Department of Homeland Security, under the House version of the bill, at least, would not be guaranteed access to these databases.

BISHOP: Post-September 11 reviews have revealed over 1,000 CIA reports of cables that contained the names of hundreds of suspected terrorists that were not turned over to watchlist agencies. Mihdhar and Hazmi were in all sort of public and state and federal databases prior to September 11, through which they could have been found, had anyone thought to look.

The Department of Transportation never saw the Phoenix memo. And, in hindsight, asserts that the memo would have triggered action in DOT, had it been passed to them.

FBI agents handling the Moussaoui case and the Phoenix memo, apparently knew nothing of the history of the Bojinka (ph) plot or the attempt by Algerian terrorists to slam a hijacked airliner into the Eiffel Tower in France.

I could go on and on in this vain, but that's a point that is clear.

As Ms. Hill testified recently, first, while we cannot conclude that the plot could have been detected if more information had been shared, it is at least a possibility.

Second, we, obviously, could have done much better at information sharing and must do better in the future if we hope to succeed in foiling future attacks.

Our current mechanisms for information sharing are human liaison and exchange of written reports that reflect a filtering of and the application of judgment to raw intelligence. September 11 proves that these mechanisms alone are inadequate.

As the prepared statements of several of our witnesses today make compellingly clear, broader access to raw intelligence is mandatory and we must, at the same time, apply proven computer technology to sift through this massive and detailed data to find correlations, linkages and patterns that small numbers of humans cannot possibly discern.

Computers also provide an indelible institutional memory, in contrast to human analysts who rotate from job to job.

Ambassador Taylor has told the staff that the main problem is not to gather more information, but rather to use the information and technology to mine what we already acquire.

Governor Gilmore has advised us that we must link all of the databases together.

Admiral Wilson, the just retired director of DIA, insists that all source analysts have to see all the data we collect, not just what the agency that collected it decides is important or relevant enough to disseminate.

His assertion that the humit (ph) and SIGINT databases contain a wealth of useful information that never gets examined is proven by the Mihdhar and Hazmi cases.

The joint inquiry has spent an enormous amount of time and effort trying to understand why the intelligence on Hazmi and Mihdhar was not given to analysts and consumers. What we all have to understand is that still today very few counterterrorist analysts can get access to the databases that held the information on Hazmi and Mihdhar.

Admiral Jacoby, until recently, the senior intelligence officer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, insists that analysts, not collectors, must be the proprietors of raw intelligence data, including, especially, CIA's operations cables; NSA's SIGINT intercepts; and the FBI's terrorist investigatory information.

Admiral Jacoby posed to the DCI, himself, on the need for a fundamental shift in culture and in practice.

On the other side of this position are the arguments that the imperative to protect sources and methods precludes wider access to raw data. NSA also insists that only people formally inside the SIGINT system can see raw signals intelligence, due to the need to protect the privacy of U.S. persons. In the case of the FBI, there is the added concern about compromising legal proceedings and ongoing investigations.

I don't see why people outside the CIA should not be allowed to see sensitive humit (ph) material, provided that these people are subject to the same security standards as CIA employees are. The same is true for NSA.

As for the concerns about protecting the privacy of U.S. persons, people outside of NSA can be trained and certified in NSA's so-called "minimization procedures."

With respect to the FBI, we hope that the PATRIOT Act has already provided the legal foundation to break down the inappropriate barriers to information sharing.

I hope that one of the strong recommendations of this joint inquiry is that all source counterterrorism analysts must have direct access to intelligence databases and the ability to exploit those databases with modern computer tools.

I would like to ask Mr. Andre and Ambassador Taylor -- in that order -- to comment on what I have said, particularly with respect to protecting sources and methods, privacy and law enforcement sensitive information.

I would also like to ask Mr. Andre this question: Has anything fundamentally changed since 9/11 in terms of who has access to the databases that contained information on Hazmi and Mihdhar?

ANDRE: Yes, sir. Thank you.

I think if you're -- the way you framed the issue, I couldn't have done it better myself. I am very passionate about the role of all source analysts in this process and believe they have been under valued and under employed in this regard. And to be properly employed, they have to have access to more information.

Let me be clear on a couple of points that maybe were not as clear in our statement as they should have been -- that's Admiral Jacoby's, as well as mine -- and that is that there is not now, nor has there been a problem with the sharing of what is deemed to be "threat information." Any information collector -- I know of no instance where an information collector was anything less than very responsive and very responsible and disseminated that information widely with a sense of urgency.

So the sharing information, from our perspective, falls more into the category of the Al Mihdhar -- Al Hazmi information, which is sort of seemingly benign activities -- deliberations -- acquisitions -- travel by people that wish us harm. It's that information that we wish to harvest.

We don't believe, as all source analysts, that we have to get access to the source data. We understand, completely, the need to protect sourcing and we respect that. There are cases where we certainly would want the freedom to go back to the collector and get some of evaluation of a source to help our analysts when they are evaluating that particular piece of evidence or those assumptions.

So it's the substantive data, not the circumstances of its collection that's important to us.

Much has fundamentally changed since 9/11. We have a different level of access to data from all of the organizations that you mentioned -- CIA, FBI and NSA. Some of the inhibitions on us getting information reside with us. We have taken a lot of measures to change the way we do business so that the information provider can have a greater degree of confidence that we can be trusted with their data. And, of course, our job is then to show them not only can we be trusted, but we can add value to that information.

We have taken a real hard look at some of the documents that are used to tell us why we can't have certain information. For example, in the signals (ph) intelligence world, Executive Order 12333, having looked at that -- I'm not a lawyer, but I've had a team of lawyers look at it -- that document, itself, is a very empowering document that compels sharing of information, not withholding of information.

We are very optimistic that things are in train to dramatically increase the level and type of information that is shared.

BISHOP: Mr. Taylor?

TAYLOR: Thank you, sir.

BISHOP: Ambassador -- excuse me.

TAYLOR: I think when I spoke to the staff on this matter, I was reflecting on the time that spent on active duty with the United States Air Force as the head of its investigative organization, OSI. And in that position, it became clear to me that our investigative community, our counter-intelligence community and, indeed, our counterterrorism community needs to view information in a different light.

Investigators, historically, look at information as it relates to the case that they are working on. And that becomes their focus. It's how we are trained. It's how we focus for prosecution, arrest and so forth and so on.

But it also became clear that there are nuggets of information in those investigations that affect more broadly our Air Force. And that one agent that's conducting that case can't have the perspective to understand that without sharing that information more widely within the community.

BISHOP: What about analysts?

TAYLOR: Well, not solely without an analyst, because analysis is one part of the challenge. The other part of the challenge is enabling others who are part of the rings of security that we have -- for instance, the Customs officer in Seattle that stopped Ramsi Youssef, who is also a key person -- not to do analytical work, but to understand that this particular individual -- someone in the U.S. government knows something about this person that he or she needs to check out.

So the challenge is to place into an information technology system the ability for an analyst to get access to things that they need, but also to give to our first responders, to our security officers, to our INS border guards the information they need, which is not the same as the information that our analyst needs.

Our border guards need to know that Frank Taylor is a person of interest and, therefore, we need to check him out. Our analyst may want to know a lot more about what Frank Taylor has done.

I believe information technology can help us to do this. there is a very real concern with sources and methods. We have to protect those sources and methods because without that, we will never have the information. But I don't think that's insurmountable in triaging the information and providing it in the appropriate channel with the appropriate classification to the people who need it to bring more clarity to the counterterrorism picture.

BISHOP: Thank you.

Admiral Jacoby's statement for the record, as well as the statement from the General Account Office, stresses the difficulties posed by incompatible database structures and formats -- a problem that afflicts all levels of government across the boardT this incompatibility makes it hard to share data across agencies or to conduct analysis across all of the government's diverse databases.

The GAO and DOD statements explain that there is a viable alternative.

Now, the private sector has settled on a common data framework and a set of standards that allow full interoperability across organizations. This capability is an essential for industry in the electronic age as it is now for our government in the war on terrorism. But our government is way behind the private sector.

Now the commercial standard is called XML. Testimony before us today illustrates how important it is to the war on terrorism for the government to adopt this standard and to move quickly to convert our existing databases.

Adoption of XML not only allows full data sharing, it also offers much more effective and efficient ways to analyze data and to automatically update files. Here is another instance where I believe action by the two intelligence committees is warranted now.

We could mandate adoption of XML and give the intelligence community a date certain by which it would need to have shifted over to the new standard.

Mr. Andre, how difficult would it be for DIA to shift over to the XML standard? Do you think that it's practical to insist that the intelligence community, as a whole, shift to this database standard and do it rapidly?

ANDRE: Yes, sir. Thank you.

Let me say, a major investment that we have made in the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism -- JITFCT -- is transitioning their entire data environment into an XML environment. And we think it is exceptionally important for the reasons that you point out.

ANDRE: One of the most important aspects of that is the ability to tag at the content level, rather than at the record level. Because we believe that ultimately if, like the commercial sector, the intelligence community adopted the XML approach that data -- they don't have to reside in a single repository. We can have interoperability at the data level and really empower that data and be able to do things with it we can't today.

We are a pretty good test case in both the JITF-CT and in the J2 part of DIA because we are also transitioning the J2 part into a fully digital XML environment -- a change in the way we produce our product, using, I might add, off-the-shelf commercial technology.

It isn't easy. It is painful. And I guess the big question is -- I think it's a lot simpler to sort of go from a standing start and say, "From this day on, I'm going to be in an XML world," rather than to say, "I've got 40 years worth of great big databases, like the military integrated database. And I've got to convert all of that data -- properly tag it." It will cost a lot of money and it will take a lot of time. but the end result will be certainly worth it.

BISHOP: Thank you.

According to inquiries by our staff, the FBI contacted both the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and INS in August of 2001 about Hazmi and Mihdhar. Both agencies possessed information that would have helped locate the two suspects. But the FBI asked for specific information and nothing more and expressed no particular urgency about finding them.

Both agencies claim that they had ways of finding the two and could probably have done so, if they had been asked.

Could the State Department or INS witnesses please explain how their organizations could have located these two suspects? And could they provide any insight on why the FBI did not explain why it was looking for them and why they didn't request help?

TAYLOR: I'll go first, Congressman. Certainly we were informed in August, by a request from the FBI for visa records on both of those individuals. And that's a routine request that we get very frequently and we responded to that request, as we often do, not asking the reason for the inquiry. The FBI runs thousands of investigations where that data is necessary.

Today, that would not happen -- we would ask that question, given the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

In our responsibility to investigate visa fraud, we work with many data companies around the world to -- around the country, actually, to look for individuals that we suspect are involved in visa fraud. Most recently, we've had a major investigation involving that and were able to locate 39 of 72 suspects in about a month. We have the capacity to do that -- we know how to do that, but we were not asked to do that.

Today, we would ask that question and we would volunteer our assistance to the Bureau if they were, indeed, looking for those individuals.

GREENE: Yes, sir. From the INS point of view, not only do we have a variety of other databases that contain information -- people who would apply for benefits under immigration law or people who would travel in and out of the United States that might provide us with some leads, the Law Enforcement Support Center, as I mentioned in my statement, also has access to a variety of criminal databases and also private sector databases that we can then mine to use as potential leads for an investigation.

It's not unlike what we did during the first Absconder Initiative last spring. So I think the capability is there, certainly, for us to have made a contribution in terms of actively -- had we been asked, to actively seek this person -- to go -- to take a good shot at going after them and locating them.

With respect to the motivations behind the information that we received, I simply can't answer that. But certainly from the standpoint of having capabilities, we believe we could have brought some to the table.

BISHOP: I think my time has expired. But, Mr. Chairman, let me thank you and thank Senator Wyden for deferring to me because of the exigencies of my schedule today. And I thank you very much for that.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Congressman. And best wishes on the floor of the House of Representatives today.

Senator Wyden?

WYDEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And I thank Congressman Bishop for his excellent questioning.

And, gentlemen, I come to this with the view that our software and search engines and data mining tools can go a long way to beating the terrorists, but we just aren't using what we've got. Because we've got all of these separate government systems, in effect, running databases strewn all over Washington D.C. And they've either been unwilling or unable to get together so they are connected. And then give us the best possible strategy to pick up dangerous trends.

And to change this, I wrote legislation. It is now in the intelligence conference -- we are working on it now -- that would create a single database where all U.S. information on terrorists from the intelligence community, other federal agencies and state and local officials can be gathered together and shared with any intelligent or law enforcement official who needs information on suspected terrorists.

And what this ensures -- and Commissioner Norris, I think you summed it up -- this ensures that everybody is on the same team -- federal, state and local. And I hear this from law enforcement officials in Oregon. And you have echoed it again. You're not going to win the war on terrorism from Washington D.C. Much of the important work is going to have to be done at the local level.

And the reason I bring this up this morning, Mr. Chairman, it is that with this item in conference right now, I hope that what we have heard from these six very good witnesses will give us additional strength in terms of getting that terrorist identification classification system properly funded in the conference. Should be decided, as we all know, very shortly.

And gentlemen, I think you have given us some very helpful information to get that properly funded.

Let me begin my questioning, if I might, with Mr. Manno.

The TSA Office of Civil Aviation Security Intelligence is formerly the FAA's intelligence division. And I want to begin with you. And particularly some of the history. There is years and years of history, beginning in December of 1994, with the Algerian armed Islamic group terrorists -- their hijacking near France -- a flight in Algiers -- and threatening to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. In 1995, evidence came from the Philippine national police raid turning up materials in a Manila apartment talking about crashing an airplane into CIA headquarters.

There is years and years of history with respect to the proposition that terrorists are willing to use airplane as the tool to carry out their agenda.

Given that -- and my understanding is that FAA, at that time, had some of that information. Why wasn't it used to put in place a comprehensive set of new security procedures so that, for example, let's say, in the late 1990s there could have been a requirement for hardening those cockpit doors -- why wasn't that information that was developed beginning, in a serious way, in 1994 used to put in place tough new security procedures by, let's say, the late 1990s?

MANNO: Well, Senator Wyden, we started to take a real close look and perceive the change in the threat environment dating back to 1994. In fact, we worked very closely with the National Intelligent Counsel and asked for and received a national threat assessment that was produced by CIA and FBI.

And at that point, actually invited in for classified briefings a wide range of representatives from the aviation industry and airports -- associations like the Air Transport Association in order to explain to them that the threat had, in effect, changed from what it was previously and specifically with respect to some of the radical Islamic groups that appeared at that point to be in this country.

That effort -- our ability to actually provide classified briefings -- ironically enough, the briefer on the -- from the FBI side of the house -- because the briefing was actually presented by CIA officers and FBI officers -- was John O'Neill (ph), who subsequently perished in the World Trade Center. Based on that, there were a number of measures that were implemented that changed what was the baseline security measures that had been in effect at that point.

In the case of the industry, there is always a desire to know why the regulatory agency, in this case FAA, is requiring additional measures because those things cost money. And so that effort, with the help of the community, helped us to convince them of the change of threat. And there were a number of specific things that were, in fact...

WYDEN: On that point, did you do to the industry in, say, the late 1990s and say, "We need changes like hardening the cockpit doors," and they were unwilling support that?

MANNO: What we do with the industry -- there is an ongoing effort to keep them apprised of the general threat -- of changes in the threat and changes of MOs by terrorist groups. And we have done that in a number of different ways either through the unclassified information circulars and directives that we sent out -- the briefings that we have conducted for them -- even to the point where we produced a CD that was disseminated to over 750 elements throughout the industry that spelled out, in great detail, what the threat was -- the fact that it was changing. In fact, it even mentioned the possibility of suicide attacks.

Again, this was something that was not necessarily based -- it was not based on any specific information that we had received from the community that indicated that these terrorist groups were, in fact, planning something like this. But it was a notion that it was a possibility.

WYDEN: With respect to Al Mihdhar and Al Hazmi, did your agency have the names of those two hijackers prior to September 11, 2001?

MANNO: Know, sir, we did not.

WYDEN: If you had, what steps would have been taken had you had that information?

MANNO: Well, prior to 9/11, we had a process -- and we had a so- called watchlist, which was disseminated to the industry of the other security directive process. In fact, a number of the people that were -- we suspected were involved in the -- what we call the Manila plot -- the Bojinka (ph) plot, as you refer to it -- were on that list.

And, again, what we would -- the purpose of that process was to highlight, for the air carriers, particular individuals -- individuals that had ties to terrorist groups and that presented a threat to aviation who should either be denied boarding or should be, if they showed up for boarding, be called to the attention of law enforcement.

Had we had information that those two individuals presented a threat to aviation or were -- posed a great danger, we would have put them on that list and, you know, they should have been picked up in the reservation process.

WYDEN: Is sure intelligence office connected to the major watchlists, like TIPOFF?

MANNO: We now have access to TIPOFF through INTELINK and CT- LINK.

WYDEN: Has your office ever had direct access to the National Criminal Information Center data that is maintained by the Department of Justice and the FBI?

MANNO: Currently, we don't. But we have liaison officers that are posted to CIA and to FBI where they sit side by side with other officers from INS and Customs. And so they are able to access it that way.

We are also in the process of -- we are in negotiations with the Customs Service to get access to their TEX (ph) system with a terminal that will be placed in our intelligence watch, which would then give us access to NCIC.

So we have indirect access to NCIC through our liaison officers and hopefully soon we will have it directly.

WYDEN: Does your agency believe that when there is intelligence information related to a potential threat to civil aviation that you are now getting unfettered access to all of the intelligence, including the raw intelligence?

MANNO: I don't think that there's any question in the minds of the agencies that produce the intelligence that if there is specific threat information that we need to act on, that that is provided to us. I think what we may still not be receiving is what Mr. Andre eluded to before -- is the background information that would help our analysts in better understanding the threat environment. We do that to a great extent now in producing threat assessments.

The analysts that work in our office of intelligence come from the community. We hire them from other agencies. So they bring that perspective and that has helped. And that kind of information would, in fact, help us do our job better.

WYDEN: Let me ask you specifically about the Phoenix memo, obviously, the memo where the FBI agent created an analytical product detailing suspected terrorists seeking flight training. When did your office first see that Phoenix memo?

MANNO: The first time that we saw it was when it was brought to our attention by the committee staff when they came to visit us.

WYDEN: And when was that?

MANNO: So that was...

WYDEN: Is it correct that you first saw that memo even after congressional hearings?

MANNO: The actual memo, yes. We did not see it until the committee staff brought it to our attention.

WYDEN: And when was that?

MANNO: I don't know the exact date. But we can get that for you, though.

WYDEN: But I am correct in saying that you did not get to see this memo, which many of us felt was an enormously important message? You did not get to see it -- not just before September 11, you did not get to see it until after congressional hearings were held looking into this issue. Is that correct?

MANNO: That is correct.

WYDEN: All right. How would your office have responded to the Phoenix memo if you had received it prior to September 11th of 2001?

MANNO: Well, I think we would have started to ask a lot more probing questions of FBI as to what this was all about to start with. There were a number of things that were done later to try to determine, you know, what connections these people may have had to flight schools by going back to the airman registry in Oklahoma City that is maintained by the FAA to try to identify additional people.

In fact, and that is what goes on right now. The law enforcement agencies, of course, have access to that database. And whenever we -- on an ongoing daily basis, whenever our watch were to...

WYDEN: Would you have treated that as priority business? In other words, we do have stopped other business to go after that?

MANNO: Well, we take all threats seriously. In fact, our process is whenever we get a threat, we opened what we call an ICF -- and intelligence case file. And that is so that we segregate that issue from the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other intelligence reports that we get. And then we focus on it. And the work that may entail in trying to determine whether this is a credible threat -- something that needs to be acted upon maybe by going back and working with FBI to try to get additional information. In some cases it can be working with the State Department or the CIA if it requires overseas work.

So we make all efforts to try to get to the bottom of what this is all about.

WYDEN: What recommendations have you all made regarding suspect flight training and have any of those recommendations been implemented since after September 11?

MANNO: Well, now there are a number of things that have been done. There was an effort to sensitize flight schools and fixed base operators that rent aircraft to report suspicious activity immediately to law enforcement agencies.

You know, these are the people that can best identify whether somebody that is seeking training and their schools or seeking to rent an aircraft -- that is the best chance that we have that somebody like that will be identified and reported to law enforcement.

There also is an effort, actually, by the Justice Department to vet people from other countries that seek to come to this country to obtain flight training where they will have to, in essence, undergo a background investigation before they are actually allowed to take training.

WYDEN: I am going to move on to questions some others, Mr. Manno. But I want it understood that with the FAA getting the Phoenix memo in early May of this year 2002 and the FBI agent having written in the summer of 2001, I don't think there is a more graphic example of how dysfunctional this system is. And this is what's got to be changed. And we're going to try and do it with the terrorist identification classification system. I think some of the examples you have given us today are very helpful. But this example is what the reform agenda has got to be all about.

You can't explain that to the public -- that something that important -- and significant that was available in the summer of 2001 can't find its way to your agency until May of 2002.

I'm going to move on, but, Mr. Chairman, this is something I feel very strongly about. And if we're going to get the jump on the terrorists, this is the kind of information that has got to make its way through the system.

Ambassador Taylor, let me, if I might, turn to you on the question of needing more personnel -- it is something that has been touched on several times this morning. Do you need more personnel to process the information that is received? Is this a question of personnel or lack of technology? Tell us what you think the challenge is.

TAYLOR: Sir, you're speaking in terms of the information we receive for our...

WYDEN: Right.

TAYLOR: ... within our visa system? Or just...

WYDEN: Right.

TAYLOR: ... more broadly?

WYDEN: The information you need to get through, and certainly you have touched on the major area of what I'm talking about.

TAYLOR: Certainly, we have made a major investment in technology and will continue to make that investment in technology. We do require a to interface with the INTEL community to broaden, perhaps, the top off database to include more databases. We have not been funded for that purpose. And, certainly, should that be the case, I think our secretary has had discussions with Director Tenant on that issue and would look for a collective effort with the director to expand the top off database with other data from CIA databases.

I am not in a position here to tell you that I need X number more people or X number more dollars for technology, except to say, sir, that we are focusing very squarely on this need. We have just completed our 2004 budget review with the deputy secretary. I think he believes very strongly that he will reflect those priorities when that budget comes forward. And our department has no higher priority than to focus and improve on our system and the availability of our system to other members of the federal, state and local government.

WYDEN: Governor Gilmore, a question for you -- and we have enjoyed working with you over the years. As you know, I chair the Science and Technology Subcommittee, as well, and enjoyed our relationship.

Tell me, if you would, what major recommendations did your advisory panel make that have yet to be fulfilled by the administration, Congress and other governmental bodies?

GILMORE: Most of the recommendations that we have made have, in fact, been adopted. We have made about 80 or so, Senator Wyden.

I think that where our focus is right now is on what we are going to be doing in this coming report, this December. And on that, I believe, we're going to be focusing on the need for a unified fusion center for the purpose of bringing together information from all sources.

The emphasis on the questioning today has been on the information -- exchange of information through databases. But our focus has been on the cultural changes that need to be made. And we will probably recommend a fusion center -- probably a stand-alone independent organization that would be in a position to bring information together from all different sources and pull it together.

With respect to other recommendations that have not been made -- have not been, at this point, implemented, we don't believe there has been a sufficient focus by the federal government on the necessity of working together with states and locals, particularly the exchange of information. For example, we have suggested that there be major procedures and processes put into place in order to share important information, even after analyzed, Senator, with state officials -- governors and then key officials in the localities. Nothing like that has been done, nor hardly discussed.

Even now, most of the discussion is among federal agencies in the exchange of information, as opposed to the true creation of a national strategy.

WYDEN: Let's see if I can get one last question in.

Mr. Andre, the former DIA director, Admiral Wilson, has told the joint inquiry staff that he was never sure that he received all of the available intelligence information. He also said that senior defense officials received information that his analysts did not receive. And he questioned what good, in effect, it did for him to be aware of intelligence information that his analysts did not receive.

So my question to you is what impact, prior to 9/11, did the withholding of some intelligence information from analysts have on the DIA's ability to do the kind of all source analysis that is needed to do the job properly?

ANDRE: That is, of course, sir, a tough question because we don't know what we don't know. But it brings up a point -- particularly the issue of information going to very senior officials and not to the analysts.

You'll notice in my statement, I talked about information that was not subjected to analytic scrutiny. I think that's the key. We are pleased when a collection agency whispers in the ear of the secretary of defense of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the director of DIA and that's good. However, to extract meaning from that data -- to perform the true analytic function, we need to get that information into the hands and the brains of analysts who are paid to fill in the gaps of missing information -- to compensate for absent evidence and to turn information into knowledge. That's what we pay them to do. If they don't have the information, they can't do that.

So it's hard to judge what the impact of missing information was, except to say, categorically, that our knowledge, thus, was incomplete.

WYDEN: Chairman, thank you.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator.

Thank you for excellent questions and the informative responses of the members of the panel.

Congressman Hoekstra?

HOEKSTRA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you to the panel for being here today.

You know, I guess I'm not buying it yet in that things have improved all that much since September 11. If you go back through the history, it appears that information sharing has been a long-term problem. The bureaucracies have put in a number of different mechanisms to try to deal with that over the years -- signed memoranda of agreements with other agencies -- the use of detailed employees to other intelligence and law enforcement agencies -- participation in joint task forces -- attempts to design and field common databases.

Governor Gilmore, in your work of your committees, have you gone back and taken a look at how long information sharing has been a problem in these different types of mechanisms and their effectiveness in improving the situation?

GILMORE: Congressman, we -- I don't think we're buying it, either. We think that much more needs to be done in order to be able to share information. We were alert to it when we began our commission, back in January of 1999 and began to inject it into our reports, which, of course, were submitted to the Congress and to the president.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, we are a congressional advisory panel. We are established by your statute. And we have been here to give you this information. We have been very happy with the congressional attention that we have received. And hopefully we have been a help to you.

With respect to this issue, though, it's been true from the very beginning -- I think, Congressman Hoekstra, I would make this point -- and I think we have made this point in our commission -- the challenge is not so much technical. And even good wishes of people that want to meet together on task forces and so on. There is a cultural difficulty that we have to confront. And the cultural difficulty is that organizations that gather intelligence don't share that information. They don't share it because it's -- because of turf issues -- because of, frankly, the system that we have always had of holding things secure. And if you give it out to somebody else, there's a risk that it will be released. And, as a result, we have cultural institutional resistance built into this.

And I think that is what has to be confronted.

HOEKSTRA: Can you explain -- excuse me -- can you explain to me how the fusion center will work in a way to address those issues so that if a joint committee is sitting here in two or three years, it's not the fifth one will be "fusion center -- another failed attempt..."

(LAUGHTER)

"... at, you know, information and data sharing"? What makes the fusion center a solution, rather than another bandaid?

GILMORE: The theory under which we are working and beginning to develop for our final report would be that you would begin to take counterterrorism information from all of the different intelligence agencies and put them in one place, where a group of people can look at it from that basis, instead of it being ad hoc -- instead of it being separated out through this culture of separation and lack of information. Put it together in one place and give one body of people a chance to look at that.

And that would facilitate the opportunity -- not necessarily the conclusion, but the opportunity for communication with states and locals, as well. And they need to give information and to get information.

Quite frankly, much of the information as to what's going on within the communities out there -- suspicious activity and so on -- isn't even in the federal government, it's in state officials and local law enforcement people.

HOEKSTRA: Ambassador Taylor, you know, you talked about, I think, in your testimony or in the interviews that you've given to the joint staff -- you talked about the ability to, perhaps, have helped the FBI. Why would it be that, you know, in the 2001 the FBI would not have seen your resources within the Department of State as being a significant asset in helping them find these individuals that they put on the watchlist?

TYALOR: I don't know that the FBI doesn't see our resources as a significant help to them. I suspect that in this particular case, an agent was following the leads that he was given and didn't see a need at that time to ask for that assistance.

I have learned over the years that in the investigative community sometimes we don't realize how much capability is out there to help us until we ask. And experience goes a long way in learning who can help you get these things solved.

So I don't know that there is a reluctance by anyone in the FBI to do it. it may just be that the individual asking that question didn't understand how we could be brought to bear to help them solve that problem.

HOEKSTRA: So they didn't understand your capabilities or they do understand your capabilities? Because earlier you said that, you know, you would now ask the question -- you would now ask the FBI the question, you wouldn't just receive the information and say, "OK." We would now ask them the question if they...

TAYLOR: Right.

HOEKSTRA: ... weren't in any urgency or whatever, you would probably get the same response and just don't worry about it, just, you know, go through your normal procedure and don't put it on priority. Is that what you would have expected to happen?

TAYLOR: Well, today, we would ask the question, "Why are you asking us for this information?" because of our responsibilities for visa fraud. And "Should we be joining you in this effort that you are engaged in?" Indeed, our agents that are now at the 19 joint terrorism task forces -- their primary reason for being there is to make sure that when inquiries come up involving visas in a terrorism investigation, they are there and available to help support the investigation, not as an afterthought, but as an integrated part of that investigation.

HOEKSTRA: Commissioner Norris, both before the hearing and in your testimony you indicated, I think, a level of frustration that perhaps you may have seen some improvement, but it's not anywhere where you think it needs to be for you to do your job effectively. Is that accurate?

NORRIS: That is quite accurate.

HOEKSTRA: You're not buying it either?

NORRIS: I don't buy it at all. I don't and I, you know, Governor Gilmore is right on the money. This is -- frankly, the discussions that I've been hearing for the last year -- it's been frustrating to me and others in my position because, frankly, most people -- most of the discussions of people that -- they just don't get it. There's a lot of discussion about the technology and access to database and all -- this is not -- it's just not the way to do it.

This is exactly what we are looking for -- is some fusion center -- an intelligence center -- something like that because, frankly, as much as we need the information to be given to us, because, you know, we learned about the orange alert the way everybody else in America did -- on television. And we need to know not only why we are at this level of alert, but, you know -- excuse me -- that we are, but why we are. You know, do we look up? Do we look down?

We don't know what we're looking for, number one. And the fact is, as was just stated, we're the biggest gatherers of intelligence in America. I mean, in my city, alone, we arrested 100,000 people last year. We've got 235 people who were given receipts called "stop tickets." We took their identification -- we know who they are, where they live, what car they were driving, what they said. We have many investigations going -- narcotic investigations. We have wire taps up all over the city. We have cameras -- intelligence cases going. We can't even share this with anybody who needs to see it.

And, frankly, we're the biggest collectors. It's not the federal government, we're the ones -- we want to give it away and we can't. And the fact that we can't give this away is frustrating because we can tell when people move from one cave to another in Afghanistan, but we can't tell when they move from one row house to another in Baltimore because no one is looking at our information.

I mean, if someone is wanted in Florida, wouldn't you like to know he was stopped in Maryland for a traffic stop -- was arrested -- was given a ticket because he was suspicious by the local police?

This information is out there and no one is looking for it.

HOEKSTRA: What information do you have or receive on the different federal databases that are out there and that are available? Are you sometimes surprised at the databases that -- maybe if you're watching a hearing or participating in a hearing, say, "I didn't know that information was available"?

NORRIS: Sometimes it -- we don't know it's available. The frustration, sometimes, though, is that, you know, as investigators, we are looking beyond the horizon. When we see things that are suspicious to us, we want to go further in our investigations. And what's frustrating to us, many times, is the tendency to figure out 40 reasons why we can't call this a "terrorist investigation" or there is no reason to look at this any further.

When the fact is if you're looking even further when you get stuff that I discussed in the beginning, and not figuring out every reason why we should be discarding this, just because there is -- you know, one of the things asked me by the local media when we uncovered this group of people, who may or may not have -- be a support cell or an operational cell -- I don't know what they are doing, but their statement to me was, "Well, they're not on anybody's watchlist." So, I said, "Oh, you mean the list that, like, Bin Laden is going to provide to the American government of people who are here for like the last 15 years?"

It's a ridiculous proposition. We need to be looking at everything that's being worked on around this country. We have had people photographing and sketching the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. We've brought them in. They are in federal custody now. Some are being deported. Shouldn't the police in New York know about this -- and Philly and Boston? Wouldn't they all like to know just in case they had similar activity on the same day, which, in our case, was the fourth of July?

This is the stuff we need to be sharing. And it's not going to be done by database. It's going to be done by us talking to each other, sitting in a room over coffee, because that's how all the work is done in law enforcement.

If you're not sitting there everyday talking to each other and discussing yesterday's events, it's not going to happen.

HOEKSTRA: Thank you.

I'm not sure whether the answer is something along the lines that Senator Wyden has proposed or that the commission will propose from Governor Gilmore. But I believe another bandaid approach in 2002 is not going to be sufficient.

And, Mr. Manno, it is not your responsibility, but let me just send a message, because we apparently can't get calls returned from TSA. But if, you know, if you're dealing with other agencies -- if TSA is dealing with other agencies in the same manner that it is dealing with, perhaps, some members of Congress and for your customers -- the people that go through your screening at the airport, it's business as usual. And it's not a learning organization that is trying to improve the way that it deals with -- in the airport that I go through, which is a test sight for the implementation of federal takeover of the airports, it has been very disappointing.

The willingness, through some very unfortunate circumstances -- the response from TSA to take a look at these opportunities and say, "You know, this hasn't worked very well and, you know, we really would like to sit down and interact with the folks who have experienced this so that we can become a better agency to serve the public better." The response from TSA, and, again, you're the person here and it's not your area of responsibility, but this is the only way I can send the message is that it's disappointing. And it says to me this is an agency that's working more like old bureaucracy than new bureaucracy.

Mr. Greene, we're talking about all of the information sharing. How many undocumented illegal aliens do we have in the United States that we don't have much information on, if any?

GREENE: I think the commissioner has testified in the neighborhood of seven million.

HOEKSTRA: OK. I mean, I just -- Governor Gilmore, does that worry you?

GILMORE: I beg your pardon?

HOEKSTRA: Does that worry you?

GILMORE: Seven million?

HOEKSTRA: Seven million.

GILMORE: That's a lot of people.

HOEKSTRA: That's a lot of people. I mean, I think the -- what we need to be taking a look at is we've got some other issues here. No matter how good we get at information sharing on the people that are in the database, that if we get to be very, very good at, you know, connecting the dots of the people that are in the database, there are a whole lot of folks that -- there are a lot of ways to slip into this country, which are outside of the databases and that somewhere within Congress, I would guess as part of the national strategy on domestic -- or against terrorism, we are going to have to acknowledge that. And that we are going to have to find a way to deal with, you know, up to seven million people who entered the country and have gotten here illegally.

GILMORE: Yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, Congressman, I apologize for interrupting. And this will not come out of your time. But there is a vote underway in the Senate. We have approximately six minutes left. So Senator Shelby and I are going to have to leave for that.

Senator Shelby has asked if he could commence his questioning when we reconvene at 2:00 this afternoon. So I will turn the gavel over to Congressman Goss to conclude the morning session. And we will join you at 2:00.

HOEKSTRA: The final issue that I just want to address is Ambassador Taylor -- is that due to the increased threats to Americans in the late spring and early summer of 2001 and the Taliban's provision of sanctuary to the UBL and Al Qaida, a demarsh (ph) was issued by the State Department to the Taliban, asserting that we would hold the Taliban responsible for any attacks on Americans by UBL terrorists during or after that time.

In a letter to the State Department on June 18, the joint inquiry staff director requested that demarsh (ph), but we have not yet received it. Can you give us some information as to why we haven't received that document and what response you received from the Taliban?

TAYLOR: Certainly, sir. You are referring to a demarsh (ph) that was delivered, I believe, on the 29th of June by an Ambassador in Islamabad.

The response we received was that...

HOEKSTRA: And what was the content of the demarsh (ph)?

TAYLOR: Essentially, as you outlined it -- that we were very much concerned about indications of terrorist planning coming from Bin Laden and Al Qaida in Afghanistan and that we would hold the Taliban responsible for any terrorism planned or executed by Al Qaida from the territory of Afghanistan.

The response, in general, was that the Taliban were looking for evidence that Bin Laden had, indeed, been involved in such activity. They did not believe it -- that he could threaten the United States from Afghanistan. And they indicated they had no evidence to support our concern.

HOEKSTRA: We received a written response from them, as well?

TAYLOR: No, sir. I can't recall whether it was written or verbal. There was a written response that was translated, but, my colleague tells me, quite confused.

That request is in for declassification, I believe. And as soon as -- I believe that decision is forthcoming very shortly. And that cable will be provided to the committee.

HOEKSTRA: Mr. Chairman, that concludes my questioning. Thank you very much.

GOSS: Thank you very much, Mr. Hoekstra.

I understand Ms. Harman would be recognized for five minutes now, if she chose.

The gentlelady from California.

HARMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to apologize to the witnesses for missing their testimony. But, as Governor Gilmore knows, in particular, this subject of information sharing -- or the lack of it -- is much on my mind.

I want to say to you, Governor Gilmore, that I think you get all the prizes for chairing the most commissions that have done the most work on the subjects we have been addressing in this joint inquiry. I was a member of one that you didn't chair. It was ably chaired by Ambassador L. Paul Bremmer. And we made some recommendations, as well.

I am pleased to hear that most of your 80 recommendations have been adopted. I think that's a good start. Many capable people were out there talking about changes.

But I think, as we have just been saying, that much more needs to be done.

I want to ask about one idea that has passed the House by a bipartisan vote of 422 to two. That's unusual, as we all know, and maybe a good model for future votes.

But, at any rate, another member of this committee, Saxby Chambliss, and I introduced an information sharing bill, which did pass the House. What it requires is for a program to be developed by the administration within, I think it is now a year -- we had initially proposed six months -- to share information in a redacted for, with sources and methods deleted, over existing networks, like the Inlets (ph) network, with our first responders.

HARMAN: I know this won't solve the whole problem, but I did want to get on the record your response to this approach. It has broad support from outside and -- as well as inside. Governor Ridge's office is in support of it, for example. And somehow we haven't yet gotten any momentum going in the other body. Unfortunately, no member of that body is sitting here. They're all voting, but I still would like to make a record on this subject and would invite you, perhaps you Governor Gilmore first, and any others to comment during my five minutes.

And by the way, I wish you good luck in your new law practice.

GILMORE: Thank you, Congresswoman Harman, and thank you for you leadership on this. Congresswoman and I have been working together on these issues for several years now and we appreciate your leadership.

With respect to this issue, one of the central tenants of the commission -- the commission's reports that we have submitted to the Congress and to the president, has been the necessity of a national strategy that includes federal, state and local personnel.

As we have said today in this testimony, it is absolutely essential that we utilize the strengths that exist in the first responders and the states. The theory under which we have been operating is that the correct way to respond is to the utilization of the first responders and having them trained, financed and prepared to play that role, under a state plan, and with the support of state organizations, particularly with the emergency operation centers established in the states, which is a model we see all the time. It works on floods, disasters of all different measures, and it works very well. Usually, in partnership with FEMA, a lead federal civilian agency, and with all of this that this is a good response with respect to prevention. You cannot prevent without the sharing of information.

Congresswoman, if your system could go into place to at least begin to put some structure into place, which would begin to get information into the hands of the first responders, and into the states that organize and manage the overall state responses, that would be a tremendous asset. And then from there, we could always find ways to refine as we went along, but first, this would be a great leadership if it could be established.

HARMAN: Well, I thank you. I think -- I think I'd love to hear from you, Admiral...

MANNO (?): Sure.

HARMAN: ... about your...

MANNO (?): I think I got promoted. I love this.

HARMAN: ... comments, I...

MANNO (?): This hearing is getting better for me.

HARMAN: I'll promote you to anything you want if you can solve this problem.

MANNO (?): I know. No, we are -- be very much in favor of what you just proposed. Very frankly, you know, we hear so much discussion of sources and methods in the protection of this it's, you know, if the information coming was overheard in a coffee in Turkey or from a paid informant in London, it is of no importance to me. We just need the information. We charge in protecting our cities, and right now we're not getting any information to do so, and it has not gotten any better a year later.

And if this would get information into our hands and get in quickly, we certainly would take it in the redactive form. We'd be very much in favor in which we just stated.

HARMAN: Well, I think my time is up, but I would just comment that it answers the problem you pose which is we need to know what to do. It's not just the need to know to be alert; it is what should you do. And you need actionable intelligence that can direct you to people or places, to find people or protect places. And this is the kind of thing that could be transferred through the system, and I would just urge our witnesses and others hearing my comments to suggest to the members of the other body that they might attach this idea to the Homeland Security Bill or pass it as an independent bill so that we could get action as quickly as possible. I think that this is sorely, and in fact, my understanding is the administration has the authority to do this without legislation, so maybe this suggestion will fall on friendly ears and this policy will be enacted even without legislation.

Thank you all very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GOSS: Thank you, Ms. Harman.

I am going to use my five minutes as well in the interest of abbreviating the afternoon session. If you don't mind and can hang on for five more minutes and then we will break for lunch.

My questions go specifically to statements you've made and your very helpful presentations to us. And I want to thank you all, because I think you have all emphasized concerns that we have are legitimate and, indeed, need attention. And frankly, I've learned some new interesting thoughts.

And Governor, I'd like to ask you, first of all, if you -- if you can explain to me why all the brilliant work that you and your panels did with Ms. Harman, and so forth, received approximately the same audience reaction that the work of the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees received on the subject of threat warning during the end of the 90's and into the 2000 millennium?

GILMORE: Mr. Chairman, I think that one needs to go back to where this was at the beginning of 1999 when we were formed. The Congress was expressing concern. That's why the commission was formed.

The commission is not a typical beltway commission. It is not a group of wise men. It is heavy on. It will -- chaired, obviously, by a state official, a governor, general officers, retired, are on this, intelligence representatives, but very heavy on fire, police, emergency services, health care, epidemiologist, very unusual. And all drawn from the states out in the communities to get a different sort of look, and that's what the Congress was looking for.

But, at the time, you know, it's hard to go back, I think, and think before 9-1-1. It was such a searing experience, but it was considered to be somewhat theoretical. It was considered to be, at that time, something that people were concerned about, but there was not imminent threat being defined by any law enforcement agency anywhere.

So as a result, we were putting together the best information we could based on the information we had, working with the Rand Corporation in order to determine that there were threats, but we were in a position only to say what we thought, from a matter of policy, was the case. It wasn't -- it isn't the same thing as an alert. An alert has to be based on hard intelligence, gathered from intelligence organizations at all levels of government, synthesized and put together in order to issue a real warning in the right place. And that, I think, would get people's attention on an operational basis, but in the meanwhile, in the early 90s, this was a policy group, and remains a policy group, making recommendations to the Congress and to the president.

GOSS: Thank you, Governor.

Commissioner Norris, if I may ask you two specifics. One is your capabilities with your law enforcement people -- do you have a language capability in your analysis center, is the first question. And the second question is -- are you restricted, your law enforcement personnel, from going into public places like Mosques and church and so forth?

NORRIS: First question is yes, we do have a language capability just by good fortune. One of the Sergeants in my intelligence division speaks Farsi and Arabic, and we have others with the same language skills who happen to be in the police department. And they were, when I formed our intelligence division, they were drafted into service there. So we're fortunate in that regard.

GOSS: You think that's unique or in other cities around the country have the same experience?

NORRIS: I think so. I mean, I know my experience -- from the NYPD, I know they have tremendous language skills just by the sheer size of the organization, but I think it's kind of unique. I don't think very many places have it. We have it because, frankly, the federal agencies have been asking us for assistance in that regard because we have native speakers who become police officers, so we're very fortunate. It's pretty unique.

As far as the Mosque, public place -- it's a very sensitive subject in most cities including ours. And intelligence is a dirty word in police agencies for a long time. We have a criteria of opening investigation and cases and the like, and that's how we get into these, but before we could actually put people in in any kind of capacity as under-covers. We get that information from all communities, from overt sources, though, you know, from community members, meetings, community affairs and our own intelligence division. But as far as placing under covers, it requires, obviously, my approval.

GOSS: It is -- is it policy or it a question or law?

NORRIS: It's a question of policy right now.

GOSS: Thank you very much.

With the last question, I would ask as my time has expired, would go to Mr. Greene. You mentioned Florida and the working relationship that is being initiated. Is it your assessment -- I know it's early and I know a couple of the individuals involved, Sheriff Hunter (ph) and Sheriff Sloan (ph), some other people who are -- you work with who are very grateful for that. Is it your opinion that this is working or not?

GREENE: I have a strong sense that it is. We've gotten some feedback from our people who are working with the local law enforcement agencies that this is a good partnership. There's one arrest that we -- that we can report, and I can give your staff the details, but by in large the biggest boost for us is the fact that we are working side by side with local law enforcement agencies on these domestic security issues, and the -- it's, as the commissioner described, at the interchange over the coffee, that is really the force multiplier for us here.

GOSS: Well, we would be glad to provide more coffee if that's what it takes.

Thank you very much. We will be in -- at lunch and recess until 2:00. At which time, Chairman Graham will return and I understand that Senator Shelby will start with a twenty minutes.

GOSS: I wish you a happy lunch and we'll see you then.

(RECESS)

CHAIRMAN: I call the hearing to order. Senator Shelby is the next 20-minute questioner.

SHELBY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, first I've got a statement to make and then I'll get into the questioning. I know some of the panel got a time limitation, so I'll try to be brief.

The topic of information sharing has become central theme of our investigation, as everybody here knows. I believe there is now unanimity on the need for our government, yes, our government, to consolidate and to manage all, all available information on the terrorist threat. Most Americans would probably be surprised to know that one year after the terrorists attacks of September 11, there is still now federal official, not a single one, to whom the president can turn to ask the simple question what do we know about current terrorists threats against our homeland a year later? No one person or entity has meaningful access to all such information that the government possesses. No one really knows what we know and no one is even in a position to go to find out as of the time we're sitting here.

This state of affairs, I believe, is deplorable and it must end. In the information technology world we're on the verge of dramatic new breakthroughs in data mining capabilities that are giving ordinary analysts and extraordinary ability not just to search, but to analyze and to understand enormous quantities of data from a vast array of different data sources.

The cutting edge of intelligence analysis, in other words, is likely to be in so-called crunching massive amounts of data on a genuinely all-source basis drawing upon multiple data streams in ways never before possible, but possible today.

However, as long as we have no one, Mr. Chairman, in a position to see all the many data streams that exist within the federal government, much less those that may also exist in the state and local arena and in the thriving information economy of the private sector, all of these rapidly advancing data mining and analytical tools will be of little use to us. Already, Mr. Chairman, it has been one of our frustrations on this committee, to see the degree to which even agencies that acknowledge the importance of interagency electronic information sharing are each independently, yes, independently, pursuing separate answers to this problem. We heard a little of it today.

Even their responses to the problem of agency-specific stovepipes are too often themselves stovepiped responses. The DCI's own initiative to create an intelligence, community-wide intelligence community system for information sharing depends wholly upon agencies deciding what information they think other agencies analysts need to know. Every agency will be charged with populating its own shared space that will be searchable by clear and accredited online users. No outsider, it seems, would ever have access to an agency's real databases. This is exactly the type of thinking that I think we must, we must purge from our intelligence community.

We need new ideas and a genuine appreciation in the community's top management of information technology and how it can be exploited to attack the target. Mr. Chairman, as we saw last week, the most innovative ideas put forth by our witnesses were more money and more people. Yes, more money and more people. Unless we see some new thinking, and leadership within the intelligence community, Mr. Chairman, I believe that more money and more people will get us, yes, more of the same. That we do not need.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to submit for the record an article by Stan Hawthorne (ph) entitled Knowledge Related to a Purpose, Data Mining to Detect Terrorism. This article, I believe, effectively discusses the need to integrate our information systems and I commend it to my colleagues and I have a copy here for the record and I'll get it.

CHAIRMAN: The document will be entered in the record.

SHELBY: Mr. Andre, in your remarks earlier you suggested that there might be problems with information sharing, in part because of overly restrictive interpretations by intelligence community lawyers of existing law and executive orders. Do you think progress in information sharing has been impeded by the development of a mythology of restrictions that encourages day-to-day, hour-to-hour decision makers to assume more barriers exist than actually do exist?

ANDRE: Yes, sir, I do. I mean that was the point I was making that there's nothing wrong with the laws, but the interpretations have unduly constrained us in receiving some information.

SHELBY: And you've seen examples of that, have you not?

ANDRE: Yes, sir.

SHELBY: How can we on this committee and members of the Senate and the House, how can we dispel any such myths and focus on what the law actually provides? Is that a question of education of the people involved in the various agencies?

ANDRE: Yes, sir, I believe it is. You know, the word culture was mentioned a number of times. And I think it's very understandable over the past couple of decades how we've gotten so afraid to touch certain categories of information. I mean, as was mentioned, there were penalties for crossing that line. I think we have an initiative with the Department of Defense to go out and educate the inspector generals, the general councils and the intelligence oversight people as to what the law really says and how, in today's threat environment, it might be interpreted.

SHELBY: You were not here last week, but you may have followed the hearing, but there was a lot of confusion about the criteria for FISA. And even some of the witnesses, I believe Chairman Graham asked some questions on this and others too that maybe some of the FBI lawyers didn't really understand the criteria for FISA that they were dealing with everyday. And we were astounded here.

SHELBY: But, I bet you've seen that in community yourself, have you not?

ANDRE: In space, yes, sir. And it's circled down to every level. The analysts have been conditioned not to ask for certain kinds of information. But, we're changing that. And they're getting more aggressive.

SHELBY: They should ask for anything that has probity value to what they're doing.

ANDRE: And when they're being told no, we're pushing it up and pushing it up the hill. And, you know, what we have to do is mount an aggressive assault on all sources of information. And that's exactly what we're attempting to do.

SHELBY: Then how do we do all source information, that is bring all relevant information regarding a possible terrorists strike or anything from every quarter to a single collective source, is that correct?

ANDRE: Yes, sir. And...

SHELBY: That's easier said than done. But, it has to be done, doesn't it?

ANDRE: Sure, because the understandings of the laws, the interpretations of the laws create seams that the bad guys understand and they take advantage of. I am convinced of that.

SHELBY: But as long as you have all these separate kingdoms, or whatever you want to call them, you will never have a fusion of information consistently at the right time and at the right place, will you?

ANDRE: No, sir.

SHELBY: Mr. Andre, acting director Jacoby and this was touched on earlier today, but I just wanted to be clear, said in his statement for the record that we need a paradigm shift in the ownership of information within the intelligence community. How strong words, but say they have meaning. Rather than allowing the agency who collected information to control which analysts are permitted to see this information, Admiral Jacoby suggested, as I understand, that we need to ensure that ownership of information resides with analysts. Is this DIA's official position, or would you like to elaborate on that?

ANDRE: I don't know that it needs much elaboration. It is certainly...

SHELBY: Speaks for itself, doesn't it?

ANDRE: Yes, sir, it does.

SHELBY: What steps do we need to take here in the Congress to create a system which analysts are empowered to access any, any, information they need in order to do their job, because the key isn't it? All bits of information coming together in a collective mode makes the whole doesn't it?

ANDRE: Yes, sir.

SHELBY: You have some suggestions in what we...

ANDRE: If I were king, which I'm not, I'm not even a minor warlord, I would...

SHELBY: Well, let's you make you the crown prince for the sake...

ANDRE: Yes, sir.

SHELBY: ... of conversation.

ANDRE: What I would start with is information standards, that's a starting point because in order to start managing our information collectively, we've got to put the information into a form that it can be managed. We are not there today. We believe in DIA that that standard is, as was mentioned earlier, extensible markup language XML. We don't have to achieve systems interoperability, which would cost a lot of money and cause a lot of pain. But, if we have data interoperability, even if the data were to reside in separate repositories when we're working...

SHELBY: Go over that again. I think this is a very important point because you're not just talking to the committee here, you're probably talking to the world and at least the American people. Explain what you're talking about again.

ANDRE: Yes, sir. Much like occurs in the commercial sector, we wouldn't have to own or control or maintain a single data repository that has all the data. If the data were appropriately configured, empowered and content tagged, that's not tagged at a record level with security classification and authorship. But, the meaning of what's in that, the data, law enforcement data, for example, could be in one pot. Sensitive compartmented information could be in a second pot. Unclassified data could be in a third pot. What you're really talking about is a giant server forum.

We have the analytic discovery technologies, the relational tools and mining technology to search across the data repositories as long as the data are compatible. You, I think, and I'm not an expert, I'm not an IT person, but I've been told we can resolve many of the security concerns and concerns with things like discovery by keeping them segregated, but that when one needs, when one's working a threat issue, or an offensive option issue that they can search across all those data repositories and continue to, not only, find linkages in the data, but begin mapping that knowledge by tagging at the analytic level for the benefit of the next person that accesses that little piece of data. That's knowledge mapping.

SHELBY: Where they don't start all over.

ANDRE: They don't start all over. We start capturing the collective expertise of any analyst that's scrutinized that data and left his or her fingerprint on that data.

SHELBY: All source ought to mean all source, shouldn't it?

ANDRE: Well, yes, sir. I think I was pretty emphatic that -- about putting the all back into all source data.

SHELBY: Commissioner Norris, first of all, I want to thank you for being here today. Your oral and your written statements were disturbing to me and I suspect to my colleagues. Is it your assessment that the federal government is the impediment to information sharing among local, state and federal agencies? And, if so, why is this the case?

NORRIS: Well, it is my assertion and now we rely on them almost completely for analysis data we uncover, information that will help us protect our cities and, again, we don't need the sources and methods, we just need to know what the threat is for operational reasons. But, I think what has been said before it's not -- it's certainly not the people at the street level, you know, they do their job no matter what. And, it's not as much an IT problem. From my perspective, I think it poses -- been spoken about before a couple of times, it's a cultural problem. And it's this culture of secrecy and I guess withholding information and, you know, and I think people hide behind that fact that, you know, a lot more than they should of that they can't disclose information. Things are classified too often that need not be. Most information can be unclassified.

SHELBY: They can't disclose some stuff. They can't help you, can they?

NORRIS: That's right. And a lot of stuff that, you know, it's very hard to declassify something. You know how long that takes and what a process it is. But, there are some things that need not be classified in the first place shouldn't be. And a lot of the information is basically, you know, it should be out there for our consumption.

And these are just some of the problems we're encountering. This is, you know, we're not unlike a lot of other American cities. The problem we're encountering now is getting people to be vocal about it. I don't why people are being, frankly, so quiet and polite about it. We mean no disrespect when we say we're not getting the help. We just want to speak the truth and get some relief in our cities, our urban populated areas.

And, unfortunately, while many of my colleagues will complain privately very loud, that they're not getting anything, they have no idea and when confronted or asked though how's everything going, they smile, say things are great. You know, there's a couple of vocal police chiefs around the United States who have been sticking their necks out. And, frankly, there's a handful that have been saying this publicly. But, I can assure you it's all privately been many, many more.

SHELBY: We appreciate your candor. In the past year how many times have you asked the FBI to brief you on Baltimore area terrorism and investigations, roughly?

NORRIS: A couple of times. We just never got the briefing. The first one...

SHELBY: Has the FBI ever provided that briefing?

NORRIS: No, not yet. My question is I'd like to know exactly what is being worked on in my city.

SHELBY: Do you believe that this same situation that you have in Baltimore is being repeated in other cities throughout the country?

NORRIS: I know that.

SHELBY: Sure. Is this basically a cultural problem with the bureau?

NORRIS: That's a question you may have to ask the other side. But, it's my feeling it is, yes. I see no reason why that as chiefs of major American cities, you know, and I know we've had this discussion here in Washington with Chief Ramsey and others and Timminy (ph) with Philly. And we have people working on task forces. There are detectives working on joint terrorism task forces that can't even tell us what they're working on and they work for us. If you can't trust your police chiefs in your major cities, maybe they shouldn't be there. If that's the case, you know, we have a big problem here. We need to what's going on in our jurisdictions.

SHELBY: We need to solve that problem, working together.

Mr. Greene, we understand that prior to September 11 that the CIA refused to provide the names of suspected terrorists to the INS unless the agency believed that these terrorists were actually coming to the United States. Only then would the CIA bother to put names into the state department and INS computer databases that are designed to look out for suspected terrorists.

After September 11, we understand that the CIA changed its policy and gave the state department and INS a great many names of suspect terrorists that it had refused to share for a long time. How many new names appeared in the INS database just after September 11 when the CIA stopped withholding information like that?

GREENE: Mr. Shelby, I can tell you that over the last year the number of names that have been entered into the tip off system are a little over 14,000.

SHELBY: 14,000.

GREENE: And the majority of those are terrorism related, although some of the tip off stuff relates to Russian organized crime.

SHELBY: But, before September 11 this was not happening?

GREENE: No, that's correct, sir.

SHELBY: The joint inquiry staff has identified, Mr. Greene, over 1,000, yes, 1,000 CIA documents containing terrorists' names that were not provided the state department and INS databases before September 11. I'm asking you the obvious question; do you believe these names should have been shared with the INS?

GREENE: Yes, sir I do.

SHELBY: If the names of the two hijackers from San Diego had been in your database earlier, would your agents possibly have been able to stop them upon their arrival at the U.S. port of entry?

GREENE: We think there is a likelihood that that could have happened, yes, sir.

SHELBY: But, you didn't have those names did you?

GREENE: Correct.

SHELBY: They were not given to you.

GREENE: That's correct.

SHELBY: This information was not shared.

GREENE: That's correct.

SHELBY: Governor Gilmore, what are the appropriate limits if any upon the nature and extent of intelligence information that should be shared with state and local government officials involved in counter- terrorism work? In other words, what's the best way to structure such information sharing? You've been the governor of a big state.

GILMORE: Senator Shelby, the philosophy that the commission has taken in advising the Congress is the key importance of a partnership between the federals, the states and locals, because they're all doing different types of activities. Information is largely gained from international sources only at the federal level. But, a lot of information is gained into the overall system from police chiefs, fire departments, state police, narcotics investigators, people all over the United States that reach far beyond any place that the federal government could possibly go because the limitations of resources.

So, once the concept is adopted that it's a total partnership in order to create a national strategy then the question is what type of information, as you ask, and how should that go? And the answer is I think that you can give the information to give reasonable information and warning and analytical ability to people at the states and the local areas. And they can give information back again as well. And there are safeguards that apply today to federal intelligence organizations that could easily be applied up and down, vertically, up and down the line.

But, I think the information that the states and localities want is what is the nature of warnings and threats information that has been obtained, how legitimate is it? How does it impact on the activities of the people at the state and local level? And that then allows the states and locals to become of a partner in the overall protection of the people of the United States.

SHELBY: Mr. Chairman, my times up. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Senator.

We now are at the point where individual members will be given five minutes for questions. I am the first of those, then Congresswoman Pelosi, although she might yield, then Congressman Roemer and Congressman Boehlert will question in that order.

I'm very interested in the issue of terrorists among us. To me, of all of the links of the chain that threaten the people of the United States, one of the most, if not the most significant is the fact that a particular nation or organization has a capacity inside the United States of trained and placed operatives who are willing and capable of conducting terrorist assaults against us as we saw so dramatically on September 11 of last year.

In a closed session it was stated that one of the targets to try to disrupt and avoid the enlargement of those operatives inside the United States would be a closer scrutiny on those persons who we had reason to believe had gone through a training camp and then were trying to return to the United States or enter the United States for the first time.

CHAIRMAN: We are getting a significant amount of data from the results of the war in Afghanistan on that subject. Now, the question is how can we apply it? This question is particularly to Mr. Greene and to Ambassador Taylor. We issue visas from most of the countries that are of greatest concern to us to applicants within that country for entry into the United States. How much utility have the intelligence agencies made of your visa list to match it against lists of suspect persons to determine if there are people already in the United States or to be on the watch for persons who might be attempting to enter the United States?

GREENE: I'll start from the interior, Mr. Chairman. As I mentioned to you earlier, the information that we're currently getting from the various agencies of the national intelligence community and the 14,000 number that I mentioned to Mr. Shelby earlier, includes, but is not limited to CIA cables. But, that is giving us a capability when the use of IBIS to people who are already within the United States, for example, applying for benefits, to use that intelligence in a way that we have not been able to before. One of the other things that I mentioned, which is the special registration program under the NSEERS system is allowing us to focus not only on five countries that have been identified by the attorney general as needing to participate in this special registration process, but also allows for the individual inspectors, within certain guidelines and based on certain intelligence, to require other people from other countries to register as well.

So, I think that there is -- there's a greater expansion of the information that we now have access to in terms of who poses a potential threat to the United States in addition to identified targets by name as a result of intelligence work overseas. The challenge for us, as I said to Congressman Hoekstra, 7 million illegal people in the United States by estimates, the challenge is for us to devise a risk management strategy that would allow us really to focus the resources that we have in the interior on identifying those people who pose the greatest potential threat and it's based on the intelligence that we receive from the various components in the national intelligence community that in part helps us devise a system that allows us to manage that risk effectively.

CHAIRMAN: I'd like to ask a quick question before turning to Ambassador Taylor.

Could you assess in a few words where are we in terms of implementing this system that you have just outlined?

GREENE: We are just starting.

CHAIRMAN: Ambassador Taylor?

TAYLOR: Yes, sir. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, we have received from the intelligence community a large amount of data that has gone into the top off and eventually into our constant look out system that we continue to evaluate in terms of people who have an issued visas, as well as people, through the INS, that have come to the United States.

So, the great influx of that information has been very useful in making the tip-off and class database available for the entire community as a source for information on potential violators or others that we need to go find or, indeed, not let back into the country, not let into the country.

CHAIRMAN: I'm going to exercise the chairman's prerogative for one quick follow-up question. What percentage of those persons who are on your tip off list are also in the database for the interior activities? Is it 100 percent or...

TAYLOR: It's available completely to the INS, it's in IBIS.

CHAIRMAN: When it's my next turn, I'm going to be asking some questions of Governor Gilmore and Commissioner Norris to stay on the theme of the terrorists among us.

PELOSI: I would defer to whoever...

CHAIRMAN: Congressman Roemer?

ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our excellent panel, again, for a very helpful analysis and very compelling testimony today. We have talented people from elective office, from the different agencies around Washington D.C. And I want to especially commend you, Commissioner Norris, for your very honest portrayal, blunt portrayal of where you think this system is or where it is not.

Let me ask you a couple quick questions and I only have five minutes. So, if you could be brief, as you've been, I'd sure appreciate it. When we move in this elaborate color code system that we have developed here in Washington D.C. to try to warn our local communities, whether Baltimore or South Bend, Indiana, my home town, and we go from a yellow code to an orange code, which is the second highest code of alert in the country, what happened to you as the Commissioner of one of our larger, middle-sized cities when that code was changed? Did you get phone calls? Did you get alerts? What happened?

NORRIS: Actually we got phone calls form the elected officials in the city and the public, but we didn't get much information, hardly any from the federal government as to why, which, again, is our issue. You know, when it goes up it's also a costly -- the federal government when they raise or, you know, the level of alert, it cost municipalities a great deal of money if they respond in kind because it requires us, in many cases, a 12-hour shifts, protect certain locations, do a whole lot of things that you wouldn't be doing your ordinary routine patrol.

ROEMER: So, did you kick in all those things that cost your local government more and more money?

NORRIS: We did because what we found in that case I describe, that was the same day, we found that simultaneous with the elevation of alert. We found that group of eight men with the suspicious documents and the like. So, we did kick it up for a couple of days.

ROEMER: But, what you're kind of saying in between the lines, if I'm reading it correctly, you correct me if I'm not right here, is that if you don't get a phone call from the federal government or from the FBI or somebody and you just simply see it on TV and that happens over and over, you're probably not going to incur the costs of 12-hour shifts and other things if that kind of trend continues.

NORRIS: That's true. We don't know whether it means the alert the same or the threat is the same in Los Angeles as it is in New York, as it is Baltimore, as it is in Miami. We need a little bit information. We need a lot more information than that frankly. You'd be correct, that's right.

ROEMER: So, this is pretty frustrating for you, the color code system that we have right now.

NORRIS: Right now, yes.

ROEMER: You need more information and more of a direct contact with the federal government and more information sharing, more collaboration.

NORRIS: We need to be day-to-day partners in this.

ROEMER: Right.

NORRIS: Is what we need to be.

ROEMER: Let me ask, we have a very talented person from the CIA here, Mr. Peez (ph), who was sworn in when we had the witnesses stand. Let me ask, if I could, Mr. Chairman, to Mr. Peez (ph), if he were to receive information, very credible information, about an impending attack on the city of Baltimore, what's the process by which you would alert Mr. Norris, Commissioner Norris, about this direct threat to his city?

PEEZ: Mr. Roemer, if it is something that specific, a threat to Baltimore, almost regardless of the type to Baltimore, you'd expect immediate phone calls to be made to their security apparatus. Our normal first point of contact would be the JTTF if it is intelligence- based information. And most likely ours would be. The JTTF is the FBI-led interagency task force that is designed to pull together information on a terrorist threat.

ROEMER: So, you'd call them and they're located where?

PEEZ: There is a JTTF in Baltimore. There is 50-some nationwide.

ROEMER: But, Mr. Norris has been saying that the communications between the FBI, the 60 agents there, and his 3,200-person police force is not particularly good.

PEEZ: What I'm suggesting is an apparatus that is already set up to get instant classified information from us to Baltimore electronically would be through the JTTF. Now, you can also guarantee that phones would be picked up. Our deputy director of central intelligence for homeland security, a new position with Mr. Winston Wiley (ph), has already been in contact with the commissioner and I would expect that person-to-person contact would be made very quickly. Rarely do we get information that is so narrowly cast as a particular city.

ROEMER: How would you assess, then, whether or not you pick up the phone to do that? How narrow does it need to be to engage in that kind of process?

PEEZ: There is an attitude to get threat information out as soon as possible and it permeates through our apparatus. I know the Director of Central Intelligence would be picking up the phone. They have that type of attitude. The mechanism that exists is via the JTTF, but we also have thinking human beings that are inclined to pick up a phone. We know that we need an established mechanism that has not yet been invented for reaching out to all the apparatus of homeland security in a way that makes that apparatus feel both comfortable and well served.

ROEMER: My time's expired.

I thank the chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Congressman.

We have next is Congressman Castle.

CASTLE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I toured homeland security offices and one of the things that was explained to me there is something that Commissioner Norris and perhaps others have touched today and that is the need to work with the local communities and how important that is and how they are the ones who can really identify the trouble spots where even the cells are -- perhaps even the cells or whatever it may be. And, I think that's a very accurate statement and something that's going to take a long time to implement correctly.

But, I also have watched in the intelligence committee as we have these very top secret briefings and I pick up major newspapers the next day and read about 90 percent of what was told to us, and that's not leaking, that's just information that generally did not have to be classified as top secret or whatever it may be. And we have some discussion here of all source analysts and even the open source materials or whatever it may be, and then we also had some discussion by one of you of the length of time it takes to get somebody cleared so that they get the information which is necessary to do your job, whatever it may be.

And I am becoming increasingly concerned about this. I think there is a reaction in the intelligence community and I can understand it. And I don't mean this to be heresy, because I believe there's intelligence matters that should be kept top secret there's no question about it. But, I also think there is an easy out and that is to over classify by stamping top secret on virtually everything that one goes through an office in order to make sure that nobody's ever accused of letting something go that shouldn't go.

But, as a result of that, I think we're having problems sharing the information that needs to be shared with a lot of the agencies which are represented here today. And we worry about the communications of the CIA and FBI and those are things we have to work out. But, I am concerned about the classification circumstances and the inability of all of your various agencies to understand what the problems are. INS, for example, needs to see who is on a list of people who should not be coming into the United States of America. And if for some reason or another that is cleared fast enough to get to them, then that is a problem. I don't have the answer to this. I don't have precise, defined knowledge on exactly what the problem is. But, as I talk to experts they usually come to the same conclusion that we need to do something about it.

I'm interested in any brief comment any of you may have about that particular subject. I know it's a general subject and I don't expect you all to have the answers. And I don't know, Governor Gilmore, or anybody else, if you actually looked into in the work that you've been doing. But, I'd be interested in your comments on that.

GILMORE: Congressman, are you asking what would facilitate information sharing or are you concerned about the amount...

CASTLE: Well, I mean I'm asking essentially if you agree that there is a lack of information going in, to any of you, in the various agencies that you run and is part of the cause of this the issue of classification of intelligence at too high a level, so you don't get information which really could be made more public, if you will, which would help you in your job, plus it stymies you in terms of the bureaucracy to get that done. That's fundamentally what I'm asking. But, anybody can answer it. I didn't mean to pick on you.

GILMORE: I'm going to make one brief analytical comment and I think that the agencies themselves would have more a practical response. But, what kind of set up do we presently have? What kind of culture does it exist within? And it is if you get sensitive information you get it from a sensitive source, then all of the pressures are against disclosure. You might make a mistake. You might disclose something to someone who doesn't have a need to know. There's no system in place to make that kind of decision.

So, the tenancy I think is to error on the side of caution and not give the information, as opposed to a culture that would say no, actually we need to get this information into the hands of police commissioner in Baltimore...

CASTLE: And that's correct. And if that's the case, should we be doing something about it? Should the intelligence community be cutting this more sharply then they are now? Would that help in terms of the information which is needed out there?

GILMORE: Well, there just needs to be a different attitude about getting information out to the right people. Governors, for example, don't get this information. I don't recall getting any intelligence in the four years that I was governor of Virginia of any kind on any threat of any kind whatsoever. You know, I suppose that perhaps there was some low-level information from time to time to our state police and so on like that.

GILMORE: But, in terms of high-level threats against the commonwealth just wasn't there. And there's no set up for it to be there.

CASTLE: Well, there may be more set up now. So, we have the homeland security and we're dealing with the local police agencies more. Any other comments?

NORRIS: Well, agree with you. One of the things that been frustrating for us is the -- in the case I disclosed before I talked that we work on the same person. The explanation was certainly they can't tell because we weren't cleared. And, while that may be true, that shouldn't be the case. Because, number one, it is incredibly dangerous for both to work on the same people with undercovers, you know, throughout the city. Second of all, that just should not be the case. And, you know, it's either an excuse or if it's a fact, it needs to be an obstacle that's overcome. And, frankly, just to touch on Congressman Roemer's question, and address yours. When the threat is specific you don't even need a clearance in many cases because we've got something once when anthrax was -- right at the time when it was very hot last year. It was a direct threat to Baltimore. It came from overseas. The FBI called me immediately. In a specific threat case like that, I didn't need to know the source of method. They didn't need to clear. They just told. There's a threat at 1:15 today you're going to be attacked with anthrax, it came from I can't tell you where. But, with that little bit of information we were able to protect ourselves. And that's all we need, frankly. And that's what looks (inaudible) and just you know, you're absolutely right you can either declassify it and don't stamp them at the highest or classify -- you know, speed up the clearance of people that need them if that's the case.

GREENE: Just a quick comment. From the INS perspective the issue that you raised, Congressman, is very dear in terms of the kind of action that we can take with respect to people who are on lookouts. If the name is in the lookout system because it's based on classified information and that person is taken into the INS administration law system and processed for deportation, then in order for us to anything other than handle it as a routine immigration case, which would allow them to be entitled to bail, allow them to be able to leave the country voluntarily, and all of those benefits that attend to that, it's dependent on declassifying the material upon which the lookout is based and being able to use that in this administrative law forum. And, of course, that's very difficult, especially if there is, depending on the sources and methods used.

So, we find ourselves frequently caught in a dilemma where we have someone who we suspect really does pose a threat to the United States and yet because of the level of classification and because of the unwillingness to declassify that stuff in a manner that allows us to use it in a public forum in the administrative forum, we have to treat it like every other immigration case. And I think what happened in Baltimore recently is an example of that.

CASTLE: I can't see the lights, which is just wonderful. So, I feel my time is up because I can't see them. I didn't know that for sure. I would just like to say, Mr. Chairman, just in closing. If we're going to deal with 700,000 local police or law enforcement officials it just seems to me that we need to look at the whole broader system of what we're doing with intelligence in this country if we really expect that help. But, I hope it is something that we as a group will look at.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Castle.

Congresswoman Pelosi and then Congressman Boehlert.

PELOSI: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for your service to our country. A special welcome to the police chief of Baltimore, Maryland, a city near and dear to my heart. My father and my brother always said in politics and in keeping people safe always look after the -- well, my father would say the men in blue, my brother would say the men and women in blue, a generation later. And thank you for your service. Your presence here today points out how much our work on homeland security has to be about localities, localities, localities. They always say location, locations, location are the three important words in real estate, but localities, localities, localities I think are the most important part of protecting our people. So, this is valuable testimony that you are giving to us. And I hope that this inquiring has one purpose, but that what Congress does in a bigger picture, in terms of homeland security, we will take heed of what you are saying about having access to the information and improving the communication.

I was interested also, Governor Gilmore, in your testimony about you commission and its valuable work in which you said what really made your panel special, and, therefore, causes its pronouncement to carry significantly more weight is the contribution from members of the panel from outside of Washington D.C. that you brought in my fresh eyes on the subject and innovative thinking. Although you had some participation from the establishment, you had fresh eyes. And that's what those of us who have been advocating an independent commission on this, for September 11, had been advocating as well. Congressman Roemer has been the leader on that issue and your testimony is useful in that regard.

I wanted to use the first five minutes of my time to talk to Mr. Manno about the president's commission on aviation security and terrorism of years ago, was it 1989 that this -- 1990, May 1990. And in that commission on aviation security and terrorism the report makes some pretty stark comments. It says the commission's inquiry finds that the U.S. civil aviation security system is seriously flawed and has failed to provide the proper level of protection for the traveling public. This system needs major reform. It further goes on to say the commission has conducted a thorough examination of certain civil aviation security requirements, policies and procedures surrounding Flight 103. This is Pan Am, so this is just that one particular flight. It is a disturbing story. And goes on to tell how that all happened.

It recommends an undersecretary for intelligence at the Department of Transportation at the FAA. Is that the job that you hold as acting secretary?

MANNO: No.

PELOSI: It's a little different, isn't it?

MANNO: The Office of Intelligence at security that works directly for the secretary of transportation. It's at DOT as opposed to -- I work for TSA.

PELOSI: OK. And, so, you work with TSA. We have FAA. We have TSA now and we have the Department of Transportation. There's some relationship there, right?

MANNO: Yes.

PELOSI: OK. So, there's a different job that was established by this commission?

MANNO: Yes. That caucus was established to provide support and advice directly to the secretary on issues of transportation security, not just aviation, but transportation security.

PELOSI: Transportation security.

MANNO: That office was, in fact, set up.

PELOSI: OK. Now, in it the report it says the FAA -- one of the recommendations says the FAA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation should proceed with plans to conduct an assessment of the security threat at domestic airports. It is my understanding that these assessments are made on an annual basis?

MANNO: I think they're made on a three-year basis.

PELOSI: A three-year basis.

MANNO: There were a series of them that were done. The latest iteration, there were some that were done, the latest been 1999 and then some more airports were done in the year 2000. So, it's an ongoing process.

PELOSI: Is it your understanding that any of those assessments ever pointed to the use of airplanes as weapons as a possible threat to our domestic security?

MANNO: Not to my knowledge.

PELOSI: Not to your knowledge?

MANNO: No.

PELOSI: So, these assessments would have missed that?

MANNO: Well, what those assessments do in terms of the threat information that the FBI provides is that they look at the threat environment around the airport that they're looking at in terms of terrorist activity, criminal activity, in order to be able to provide the airport, mainly, an idea of the environment that they're operating in so that they can then have or develop contingency plans...

PELOSI: OK, because...

MANNO: ... to deal with the threats.

PELOSI: ... I don't have much time. I appreciate that, but it must have reported about the possible threat of hijacking for example?

MANNO: I believe that what they report on is the presence of terrorist groups and the kinds of activities that they are maybe involved in in that local area.

PELOSI: So, that might be hijacking, but not use of airplanes for -- as weapons?

MANNO: It could be. I simply am not aware of any that pointed to...

PELOSI: So, this is one place where the commission called for a recommendation to assess the danger, the risk, where there was possibly missed in these assessments that were being made about the threat to us.

MANNO: Well, I don't know if there was any information that actually pointed to such...

PELOSI: OK. Just tell me what your job is again. You're the intelligence -- undersecretary for intelligence at the F...

MANNO: I'm the acting.

PELOSI: The acting, OK.

MANNO: Associate undersecretary for intelligence at TSA.

PELOSI: TSA.

MANNO: And with TSA taking over aviation security and security for the other modes, we are now responsible for assessing the threat to aviation.

PELOSI: Well, my time is expired. I just want to close by saying I think that I appreciate all the good intentions and I know if you read this book you will weep because it predicts. It tells you what we should have done as far as aviation security is concerned. And it's from 1990, the president's commission under senior President Bush. And it calls for, I think, a more comprehensive -- as excellent as the work that Ms. Hill, the joint inquiry staff has done, it really speaks to the fact that while we have come down hard in terms of our analysis of what was going on in our country and the role the FBI and the CIA, there are other agencies which had a responsibility to protect the American people. We must assess their performance as well and we must do it with fresh eyes if we're truly going to live up to our responsibilities to protect the American people from terrorism.

My time is expired, but I look forward to the next round, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congresswoman Pelosi.

The next questioner will be Congressman Boehlert, followed by Senator Feinstein and then Congressman Gibbons.

BOEHLERT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have a rather general question for all the panelists. Why don't I pose it first and then I'll get to Mr. Greene with a very specific question? But, this is the most diverse panel we've had in the hours and hours and hours of hearings we have, and, therefore, one of the most valuable I think.

It's been my observation that we've spent an inordinate amount of time listening to those in the frontlines in the intelligence community and we can understand that, the FBI and the CIA. And constantly we hear from them that the problem is resources, people and flexibility. They say that after talking about all the success stories they've had and there have been many. And we should all be thankful and appreciative of that. You know, success has many parents' failures and orphan, but we don't hear about the success stories and the dedicated men and women in the intelligence community are on the frontlines every singe day. And because of that, so many attempts have been thwarted. We just never hear about them, but the failure we hear about repeatedly, day after day, hour after hour. And it's the failure that we're addressing and we're trying to get it.

I would suggest that we're never going to have enough resources. We're never going to have enough people. And we're never going to have loosey-goosey laws and rules so anything goes. But, I would suggest that the problem is more of communication, coordination and interpretation. And you are all reinforcing my thinking in a way. So, I thank you for that.

And I want you all to ponder this and I'll start first with Governor Gilmore, if you were to give us one bit of advice on the one thing that you think we should focus on, if you were to change chairs with me and give me advice to follow through with these hearings what would that one piece of advice be? And now ponder that and I'll get specifically to Mr. Greene.

We've learned during our previous hearings that Zacarias Moussaoui was an illegal alien. He was out of status as of May 22. And being out of status he enrolled in aviation school. He did a lot of things that were visible and very public and no one caught him. Then on the 15th of august of '01 the FBI launched an investigation and discovered he was out of status and did nothing for a while. And my immediate response was why didn't you throw him right in jail immediately if he was out of status? And the response was well; we're going to pursue this because we think we might learn something from it.

There's a big national debate going on about a national ID card and you know what that debate is all about. But, I would suggest there has to be some sort of document or card that serves a purpose for all people who visit the United States with biometrics and everything else, all the technology we have at hand, so that we could immediately track someone who is out of status the moment they're out of status. Would you comment on that, please?

GREENE: Yes, sir, I'd be happy to. It's frankly with that particular mission in mind that we've looked at both the NSEER system and the SEVIS system that I mentioned at the beginning of the hearing. SEVIS is a system that allows us to track students and exchange visitors who are coming in to our educational and training institutions. It allows us to determine whether they've reported to those institutions in conformance with their visa and whether they maintain their status as students or trainees under the conditions that the visa allows.

It's a system that is already generating information for my special agents to go out and start looking for. So, we already are significantly far ahead of where we were a year and a half ago with respect to being able to identify students who fail to maintain the conditions of the visa for which they are under.

BOEHLERT: What was Mr. Moussaoui's status when he was legal?

GREENE: I don't know, sir, I'll have to check. But, I believe he was a non-American visitor, but I will check that for you and be sure...

BOEHLERT: Well, are we just going to check the students? I mean the students...

GREENE: No, no, no. The NSEER system is the larger system that allows us to handle all non-immigrants. Obviously, it is a much larger universe of people.

BOEHLERT: Do you have a specific timetable for implementing this system?

GREENE: Yes, we do have a particular phase process that we're working out...

BOEHLERT: I hope it's not going to be like some of the presidential commission reports that we read and are intrigued by it and say we ought to do something about it. Then it gathers dust and we go on to something else.

GREENE: Well, you're dealing with a universe potentially as big as a half a billion people a year. So, it's complicated in terms of having...

BOEHLERT: It is, but the technology is there.

GREENE: Yes.

BOEHLERT: I'm (inaudible) chair of the Science Committee and I know a little bit about technology. It's there. We've got the means if we've got the will and the wallet...

GREENE: Yes, sir.

BOEHLERT: ... and we have to follow through.

Let me ask all while my red light is not on yet. Let me ask each of you, the chief, the governor, well, governor, I'd like you to start. If you were to chance places with me what would you focus on as a member of this very important panel. And I think it's doing outstanding work, in large measure because of a very excellent, capable, dedicated hardworking staff. What would you focus on?

GILMORE: Congressman, this committee has focused a great deal of attention on the ability to share information back and forth among federal agencies and continues to do that. And it's very much a focus even of this meeting here today. The focus has to be, in addition to that, how you get information up and down the line between federal, state and local. That is something that is not being widely discussed and the mechanisms are not there to do there, clearances are not there. And above all things, the culture is not there.

BOEHLERT: So, for example, you would suggest that when the director of Central Intelligence on December 4, 1998 declares war on Al Qaeda it would be nice if other people in the intelligence community knew about that declaration of war and were similarly engaged?

GILMORE: It would be just as important for people in Los Angeles, New York, Virginia, Montana and California to know about that and the facts connected with it as well.

And, the second thing that I would say, Congressman, is I think that we should all keep an eye on civil liberties and make sure that we don't fix things so well that we being to impinge upon the civil liberties that are the foundation of the country.

BOEHLERT: Let me tell you, nobody up here wants to rip up the Constitution and throw it away.

GILMORE: Right.

BOEHLERT: Chief, what would advise me and what would you pursue?

NORRIS: I would actually, if we were going to be radical about this and pursue things, if we could look at anything I would look towards creating a system much more like they have in England. We have a domestic intelligence agency and then an operation agency. Because as long as we have law enforcement agencies competing with each other then how you try to change the culture and tell people to get along if we're all in the business of locking up terrorists, bad guys, criminals in general, it doesn't work.

One of the reasons we get along with some of the agencies much better and share information is because intelligence agencies are not in that business. And I would look with an eye toward doing that, creating a domestic intelligence agency and an operational law enforcement agency just to pursue terrorists.

BOEHLERT: Thank you.

Mr. Greene?

The red lights on, but they're answer my question. I'm not asking the question.

CHAIRMAN: This is going to be the final, final question.

BOEHLERT: I don't answer. My question's already been asked.

GREENE: The particular challenge that I face is bridging that gap between intelligence and enforcement information. Intelligence information can cover a variety of types of data about the particular people we're interested in. To make that jump from intelligence into information that I can use in a public forum to deport somebody is very critical and that gets to the risk management sort of thinking that I suggested earlier. I think that's a real challenge for all of us to look at.

BOEHLERT: Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Boehlert.

Senator Feinstein?

FEINSTEIN: Mr. Chairman...

CHAIRMAN: Senator, I don't think your microphone is turned on.

(UNKNOWN): It's on, it's just needs to be up to you closer.

FEINSTEIN: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into the record the transcript of a hearing that we held in the Judiciary Committee the subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information on October 12, 2001.

CHAIRMAN: Without objection.

FEINSTEIN: Thank you very much. And I want to read a brief part of that hearing transcript. We had before us Mrs. Mary Ryan (ph), Ambassador Mary Ryan (ph), the Assistant Secretary for Counselor Affairs of the State Department and I was asking her the question essentially why did 16 of the terrorists receive visas. And this is the answer. "What went wrong is that we had no information on them whatsoever from law enforcement or from intelligence. And so they came in and applied for visas. They were interviewed and their stories were believed. I think like most Americans I was surprised at how much we learned about some of these terrorists in the immediate aftermath of September 11 atrocities. And the question in my own mind is why we didn't know that before September 11. We were asked by the FBI to revoke visas on August 23 of 2001 and we found that one person they had asked us to revoke we had no record of, another had been refused. A third one, his visa had expired and the fourth one, obviously, we revoked, but he was already in the United States. We've had a struggle with the law enforcement and intelligence communities in getting information. We have tried in the Bureau of Counselor Affairs my whole time in Counselor Affairs to get access to the NCIC3 information from the FBI. And we were constantly told we were not a law enforcement agency and so they couldn't give it to us. Other agencies fear compromise of sources and methods."

And there's much more in this along that line. But, more than a year ago the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed. And one section of that act sought to address two concerns by directing the attorney general and the director of Central Intelligence to establish training programs for state and local officials, which would, one, allow them to effectively identify foreign intelligence they may come upon and get it to the right people, and, two, to be effective consumers of intelligence.

My question is for the non-federal members of the panel, beginning with the distinguished commissioner. The law establishing these programs is now more than a year old. Has anyone, either from the Department of Justice or the intelligence community approached your agencies offering training? Has there been concrete results that you have seen of this initiative?

NORRIS: The short answer is no. We have not been -- no one's briefed us on training or offered it. And, frankly, we haven't seen much of a difference since this has been passed.

FEINSTEIN: Anybody else, non-federal agency?

GILMORE: Senator, I want to make a general observation.

FEINSTEIN: Governor, certainly.

GILMORE: In our commission report, our third report, we make reference to some survey results and the purpose of our survey, which was owed to over a 1,000 state and local agencies across the United States, we asked questions about federal programs, whether they were aware of them, were they effective, were they efficient and we have produced that data into our reports to make it available to the Congress. And the answer is, generally speaking, it's mixed.

Sometimes people know about the programs, participate in them, and find them effective. Very frequently they do not.

FEINSTEIN: Now, also, pursuant to the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, which is also now passed for a substantial period of time, the act required the following. That the INS fully integrates all data systems and databases maintained by the service. And that the fully integrated system be a component of an interoperable data system to be used by all relevant federal agencies in detecting and deterring the entry of foreign terrorists.

Mr. Greene, what steps has the INS taken to upgrade and integrate the agency's technology systems to comply with the new federal requirements under the border security act?

GREENE: Senator, I know that there is a project underway to meet the requirements of that act. I am not current as to the status of that project, but I would be happy to brief you or you staff when we get that information to you.

FEINSTEIN: Can you give us any estimate of how far along you are?

GREENE: I'm just not aware of that particular area, so I will get that back to you as soon as I can.

FEINSTEIN: Are you aware of any of the obstacles to ensuring that all INS officers at the ports of entry and district personnel in the interior, any obstacles to them having the right hardware, software and sufficient training?

GREENE: My understanding of the problem is that INS information systems, as you know, grew like mushrooms according to need over the last 20 years. And so we have distinct systems to deal with distinct program mission requirements. Putting that together is a software problem and that's what the project is about.

Meanwhile, in terms of the integrated lookout system, IBIS, which I mentioned to you earlier, that's now accessible to all inspectors at ports of entry, as well as to all of our officers in the interior offices. It is even being used as NAILS is being used as the LESC as a screening process. But, in terms of being able to integrate every single system that's a long-term project and I'm just not -- I don't want to go too far down the road giving you information about it without making sure that I know what I'm talking about. So, let me get back to you on that, please.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator.

FEINSTEIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Congressman Gibbons?

GIBBONS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, welcome, it's a pleasure to have you before us today. What I'd like to do is relate to you a conversation that I had and have had many times with some of our local policemen, whether they're capitol policemen or policemen back in my home state. It's regarding the issue dejure (ph), the issue that we're here about, that's information sharing.

The story relates to an incident in which the policeman came upon a car and this just happened to be one in Washington D.C., in which there were four individuals, Middle Eastern background, one had an expired driver's license. He was not driving. The other three individuals in the car had no identification. They were pulled over for a minor traffic violation, stopped, questioned.

His comment to me was he's prohibited from checking the legality of their status in the INS, and, therefore, they were released because there was no way for him to find out any information about these individuals. It was a minor traffic violation. He did not know whether he had in his hand the next four individuals who may be conducting a terrorist attack.

So, Mr. Greene, let me ask you, what legalities, what barriers and what regulatory obstructions are there that prevent local police, first responders, from getting to necessary information to be able to fare it out from this 500 million individuals, those people that are here legally, not legally in a timely fashion that could make a difference before the next terrorist attack?

GREENE: Yes, sir. As I mentioned earlier the law enforcement support center, which has been in operation for more than 10 years, is designed specifically to address that particular area. In terms of somebody who is already in the custody in local police, that can be done without any additional keystrokes. It's simply a matter of when you do the NCIC check you also check out what is called an IAQ screen and it automatically queries INS databases and gives you that information.

GIBBONS: Mr. Greene, I understand that. And I think everybody here understands that we've got a database that has known terrorists in it. A database that has known individuals with wants and warrants in it that can be checked.

GREENE: The support center goes beyond that, sir. It really has access to every single data system that the INS has and can...

GIBBONS: So, that goes back to Senator Feinstein's question?

GREENE: That's correct. That's correct. We have people there 24/7 who can actually go into the different systems that the INS has and do a comprehensive check.

GIBBONS: How long does that take? Because, obviously, there...

GREENE: The average is about seven minutes back to a police officer who's on the phone, that's the national average. They do approximately 15,000 queries a month from local law enforcement for that particular purpose. And those special agents who are located at the LESC can, in fact, put a detainer on somebody who is being arrested by the local law enforcement officials for their own things.

GIBBONS: They still have to know that the individual is a known terrorist to be able to be in that system.

GREENE: No, they can actually identify in that system people who are simply immigration violators or wanted absconders.

GIBBONS: OK.

Let me turn to Commissioner Norris over here and ask that question of you. Do you feel that your line police men and women out there on the street can access INS data without feeling restricted, impeded or in any way prevented from having full use of that data when they do a routine traffic stop?

NORRIS: Well, that's the key and that's what (inaudible). We've had great cooperation, especially, obviously, post 9/11 with out people from INS. But it requires a phone call. That means we have in custody for other reasons. The scenario you gave before, people being stopped on traffic stop, it's not likely we would -- no one would have a phone. You know, what happens in our business, unfortunately, it's always 2 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night when we run into these folks.

GIBBONS: Correct.

NORRIS: And the way it's done in the police world is via handheld radio. And that's what we would -- you know, if the names were in NCIC, that's how we would get them. And I think what has been done we wouldn't have access to that database from the street unless they were already in custody. But, they have put -- it's my understanding, they put in wants or warrants into NCIC. So, if somebody's wanted we have access to it.

But, as far as this, they would already have to be in custody to access it.

GIBBONS: So, there's no legal or constitutional or regulatory barriers that prevent anyone who is making a normal routine inquiry into a traffic violation or something of that minor sort to query INS with regard to the legal status of an immigrant?

GREENE: Can I address that, sir?

GIBBONS: Yes, sir.

GREENE: I'm not a lawyer, but any police officer can voluntarily and consensually question anybody about anything. The question is what you do with that and recently the Department of Justice indicated that there is no federal prohibition for a law enforcement officer in making an inquiry or even affecting an arrest of a civil immigration violation. It is the state provisions of the state constitution and the opinions of the state attorney generals that might pose an obstacle, but the federal system in itself does not.

GIBBONS: Mr. Chairman, I'll wait for another round to continue this questioning.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Gibbons.

We've now completed the first round of questions. We are going to start a second round.

During my questioning I said I wanted to focus on the issue of the terrorists among us.

Commissioner, what do you know about the status of terrorists and I'm going to define a terrorist as a person who was recruited and trained specifically for the purpose of having the skills of conducting terrorist operations and then was placed into your community to await a call for action. Do you have any sense of how large or if there is such a community of persons in Baltimore?

NORRIS: No, sir. I mean we have not had that kind of -- I've actually asked that question of other chiefs when they say, oh, no, I get all the information. I say really? How many people do you have in your city like this? And that's the question I pose to them. The fact of the matter is no I do not. And it's just the people we unearth as we go through our routine police duties like the ones I described before, that's what gives me pause, that we're finding this, what's really out there in our cities. But, we don't know.

CHAIRMAN: If you were going write your description of what you would like to know about these individuals in order to be of greatest value to you in your law enforcement responsibilities, what would you like to know about that community in Baltimore?

NORRIS: I'd like to know exactly what everyone else knows in my city. Whatever federal agencies are working on in my city or any other city I should know exactly what's happening. The people you're describing, the people that had been recruited, we know for a fact that terrorists are living in our cities. We all know they're here. We just don't know where they are, or at least we being the urban police departments of this country. I would like to know. And I'd like to have a briefing at least, if not every two weeks, every once a month. I'd like to know what's happening because I get briefings from my intelligence division every day. So, I know who we're working on. I know what we're looking at, the information we come across. If I had access and a full briefing from whatever agency investigating within my city, it'd make my life a whole lot more efficient and comfortable for me. I'd like to know what is happening, but currently I do not.

CHAIRMAN: Governor Gilmore, I'm going to ask you to step back into your previous life as governor of the Commonwealth where I assume you had the title of the chief law enforcement officer of the state. Was that the responsibility of the governor in Virginia?

GILMORE: Certainly and together with the attorney general, of course.

CHAIRMAN: To ask the same question I just asked the commissioner, what did you know while you were governor as to the existence of terrorists individuals or in cells and what would you have liked to have known about them?

GILMORE: Well, the short answer is very little if any. The state police may have had some of that kind of information that they accumulated from their own investigations and their own observations and working together with local law enforcement people as well. But, I don't believe there is any established pattern of communication between federal intelligence organizations and any state officials.

We approached it differently. We simply went to work on it to begin to prepare the systems that would go into place in the event of an attack. Prepared to notify the state police to go on alert to warn about hostages or any type of gunplay or communication with naval authorities and military authorities, the ability to activate the National Guard. We simply put into planning steps that would be taken in the event of such an attack. And, sadly enough, they were implanted on September 11.

CHAIRMAN: So, would you say that because, in large part, your lack of information you were forced into the position of being reactive to an event that had already occurred to opposed to be proactive to avoid that incident (inaudible)?

GILMORE: Absolutely. In this instance, of course, it was an attack on the Pentagon. And I don't know whether information could have been supplied to Virginia to prevent such an attack like that, but it could have been something else and we don't have any system set up. We simply prepared for what incident might have happened and on that we moved forward from a standing stop.

CHAIRMAN: When it's my next round of questions I'm going to ask some of the representatives of the federal agencies who are here to answer the question of what are the barriers to providing the information that the commissioner and the former governor indicated they would like to have and what would be your evaluation of the public policy implications of overcoming those barriers. That is, are there any national security boundaries that we should be aware of? And, if so, how would be describe those boundaries in terms of information that should not be made available to state and local law enforcement.

Congressman Goss?

GOSS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think, Mr. Andre, you said that terrorism is criminal. I certainly agree with you. It's also intelligence. And it's also immigration. And it's also local law enforcement and it's a whole bunch of other things too. And it's obvious from what we're hearing today that other committees of jurisdiction in the United States' Congress are going to want to exercise their oversight in areas that go beyond the intelligence portfolio. Our purpose here is to link up the intelligence product that the capabilities of our nation which are taxpayers invested provide us the product for our well-being is getting to the people who need it to do their jobs to make sure that well-being happens. And we're identifying breakdowns today.

And, part of our problem is frankly we're focused on terrorism, but we don't exactly know what terrorism involves. It's a broad definition and it keeps moving. Nevertheless, overcoming that, I think we understand it when we see it and we're trying to deal with it.

So, Mr. Manno, I want to go to a direct question following on another member's question to you. Are we profiling now at airports for national security purposes for safety in our airline traffic?

MANNO: We have a passenger prescreening process, which is based on what we've learned about how terrorist groups -- or how terrorists operation that we, in fact, use to try to identify those people for additional scrutiny. That's in addition to the specific information, the watch lists.

GOSS: So, what you're basically saying is that there are behavior patterns of people who come in that there's no pre- information on that you're screening?

MANNO: Travel patterns.

GOSS: Travel patterns.

MANNO: Travel patterns.

GOSS: So, that is a behavior pattern rather than any ethnic pattern or any characteristics, physical characteristics?

MANNO: Yes, that's correct. That's not based on race or ethnicity or anything else like that. It's on the behavior that we have seen and studied that...

GOSS: Well, let me just ask you a couple of questions. I haven't been aware that there's a serious problem with youngsters or some of my more experience senior citizens involving hijacking airliners. And yet they are caught in the screening process. It makes me think that maybe there is a random process in place for screening, which we get a lot of commentary about actually and I'm sure you do to. And that it's not filling people with confidence at this point. And, on the other hand, you get the other side of that argument is well, we're profiling and that's an intrusion of civil liberties. So, tell me about the random searches.

MANNO: There is a certain percentage of randomness and what that's designed to do, again, is because we know the opposition studies everything that we do and we don't want them to -- we want to do whatever we can to not enable them to figure out patterns, you know, the methods that we're using. So, there is a certain small percentage, actually, very small.

GOSS: So, basically, what we should be telling the American people is look, we have a procedure at the airports. We are not going to tell you what it is because the enemy is listening and we just ask you to bear with us, is that where we are?

MANNO: We definitely don't want the enemy to know what we're doing.

GOSS: I'm not making judgment. I'm just trying to understand it because we get these questions in our offices.

MANNO: And, the answer, yes, there is a passenger prescreening process that we are using and it's got a certain level of randomness in it. You know, for the reasons I've...

GOSS: So, if I'm a terrorist I should take note that we have a system in place and we're going to catch you.

MANNO: We're going to try out best.

GOSS: Right. And if I'm an American citizen I shouldn't ask right now because we want to have a safe flight? And I don't find anything unreasonable about that as long as we are a little bit more candid with the American people. Because trying to tell them that searching some of these folks who have trouble getting on the airlines unassisted and thinking that they're going to hijack the plane justifies credibility.

MANNO: Yes. Just one additional comment, if I may, the system that I just talked about was something that had actually been in place for a number of year.

GOSS: I understand.

MANNO: We're in the process of coming up with another system that's going to be refined that tries to address all of the -- some of the things that you've mentioned that is a better system. And, you know, we're working towards that.

GOSS: I'm not trying to be critical. I'm just trying to share with you the kind of observations we're getting from the public. We're all trying to create reassurance.

And, Mr. Greene, a question I would have for you is do you have adequate enforcement capability because our experience with all of the good things your agency tries to do shows us that enforcement is an important part of it and there does not seem to be enough. Is that an accurate observation?

GREENE: That's absolutely an accurate observation, sir.

GOSS: OK. Could you give me a hint of the degree of the problem?

GREENE: We have less than 2,000 agents who I can field to do street investigations on any given day, approximately 400 of those are in special dedicated projects like OCIDEF (ph) or JTTF or anti- smuggling agents working for border patrol chiefs. On any given day without leave I can probably field 1,300 agents in the field for an emergency. 7 million illegal aliens in the United States, the math speaks for itself.

GOSS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hoe the terrorists weren't listening to that answer.

GREENE: I think they've got that cold, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Goss.

Senator Shelby?

SHELBY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

President Bush, back in May when he signed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act he said and I'll quote, "We must know whose coming into our country and why they're coming. It's knowledge necessary to make our homeland more secure." Now, today, October 1, we don't really know, in other words, you don't know, which is our nation, Mr. Greene, whose present even in this country today, everybody that's come in here legally, illegally, legally, overstayed or where they are. Is that a correct statement?

GREENE: That's correct, sir.

SHELBY: And, basically at this point, you don't have the system in place to track people, know exactly where they are, when they come into the country legally, when they overstay their visa and how you're going to pick them up and get them out of here or whatever.

GREENE: That's correct. We have a system that provides us with some limited capability in that regard, but we're working toward the goal.

SHELBY: Sure you are. And you need...

GREENE: That's right.

SHELBY: ... and I understand that. You need resources. But, having said all this, some of you are probably familiar with a couple weeks ago Mr. Brent Scowcroft whose very well respected in the security business, General Scowcroft, he sat right here at this table and his judgment, something to that effect, that the safest place in the world for terrorists was in the United States of America. That's frightening. I hope that's not true, but I kind of believe it might be true. So, we have our challenge, do we not, Mr. Greene?

GREENE: Yes, sir, we certainly do.

SHELBY: Mr. Andre, you spoke eloquently this morning about the potential for cross database data mining and information sharing. You spoke a great deal about the community, how the community should approach these problems. Why aren't we hearing this from the DCI? How much of what you described is actually being implemented at the intelligence community level currently as of today?

ANDRE: Well, I don't think I'm in any position to answer that.

SHELBY: OK. You don't know, do you?

ANDRE: No, sir I don't.

SHELBY: Governor Gilmore, you spoke about the need for a government-wide, all source, yes, all source, fusion center for terrorist threat information. Do you think that a new Department of Homeland Security, which we keep debating, would be a logical place for such an organization?

GILMORE: It could be, Senator. The sense of the commissions is that it may be more effective as a stand-alone agency. One similar to EPA or a structure of that nature reporting directly to the president for supervision purposes. But, that is the sense of the commission as opposed to placing it within on department.

SHELBY: But, if you had a stand-alone agency how would it function? If you report to the president couldn't you be creating another bureaucracy?

GILMORE: Well, you could.

SHELBY: Could be, that would be the danger, would it?

GILMORE: It would be the danger. The sense of things, though, is that there is -- and the commission thought about this. We tend to be very reluctant to the Congress or the president the establishment of yet another piece of bureaucracy. We tend to approach things with that great reluctance. The challenge we were looking at was where else can you put this in order to make it effective as a fusion center for CIA, FBI, NSA, state police departments, local police departments, FBI, where does it reposit in order to achieve that? And the thought was an independent stand-alone agency might end up being the best possible option.

SHELBY: Mr. Chairman, before I let -- Mr. Peez (ph) could you come up the table and let me ask you the same question. And I'll direct the question I wrote to Mr. Andre. Why aren't we hearing from the DCI regarding the database, cross database, data mining and information sharing? You know, we haven't yet. Will we hear from them and when?

PEEZ: Well, I think you will certainly hear more on 10 October when he's scheduled to testify next in the open. We have talked about both the existing mechanisms that are working better lately like the CT link that help us share classified information and the need for more of those.

SHELBY: My times up, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator Shelby.

Next will be Congresswoman Pelosi, and then in order Congressman Roemer, Gibbons, Boehlert.

PELOSI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Andre, first I wish to extend the condolences of my constituents and I know my colleagues' to those families of those who lost their loved ones at the Pentagon working bravely for the DIA to protect our country. And welcome you in that spirit.

My question about force protect, which, of course, up until September 11 was our main focus in terms of intelligence, to protect our forces and some of those forces are in the United States. For example, you -- well, we can use Baltimore as an example, but I don't know, -- what bases are still -- is Fort Haliberd (ph) still -- are there any bases still left in Baltimore? Well, we'll go to California then, we have some there. If you were to learn that a base in -- you had intelligence that a base in San Diego, for example, was threatened, do you have a way or do you have a way, a channel of communication to the local police on that so you can let them know and if they got the intelligence first, do you have a well established channel of communication from that direction to the DIA?

ANDRE: Actually we do. One of the elements that's imbedded in the joint intelligence task force for counter-terrorism are the security and investigative arms of the military services. For example, NCIS agents and Air Force OSI agents that have domestic law enforcement enforcement authorities and are quite connected to and wired into their colleagues assigned to security details of bases around the United States. So, that's a very active and very reliable channel, both for two-way flow quite frankly. It is that bridge for us between the law enforcement and the foreign intelligence world for domestic threats.

But, secondly, you might have seen an article in today's Los Angeles Times announcing an experiment that we're conducting with CADEC in California and with the New York police department and the new northern command and defense intelligence agency using what's called Risk Net; it's an unclassified law enforcement network to share information. It's only at the unclassified or for official use only level. But, we think it offers some real potential because we may not use Admiral Jacoby's old paradigm. We may not own a lot of information we can share, but there's no constraint on us loaning our brainpower, our analytic expertise to local authorities.

PELOSI: I assume that everything you said since we were in San Diego applies to the Office of Naval Intelligence as well in terms of your communication.

ANDRE: Yes, ma'am. They're imbedded in our center...

PELOSI: I understand. Thank you.

Mr. Peez, are you still here? Yes. Is the CIA prepared to share the kind of background data to all source analytic crossing intelligence community required to do the analysis without filtering the information?

PEEZ: Indeed, we have made some conscious choices, especially since 9/11 to put more and more of the raw information out as published intelligence so that there is very much less that is, on what anybody would call the cutting room floor. There will always be a certain filtering when you get the to identity of the source and the circumstances of meeting that source. And analysts across the community have said we do want that information. We do not need that information. A problem for us has been and remains the repository that has that information and also has other information it is simply a challenge to pull the information that they do not need and we do not want to give up out of that and let them see the rest of that database.

PELOSI: Thank you.

Following up on that, Governor Gilmore, briefly and anyone else who wants to chime in, can the Homeland Security Department intelligence directorate, which has been proposed, function without access to raw data and/or function as the fusion center referred to earlier? And, you elaborated on as wanting to be separate, I understand, so why don't we focus on the raw data side of it?

GILMORE: No, I think that they would have to have raw data in order to be able to apply proper analytical skills to that depending upon what the nature of the division would be. Whether it is going to receive information already through analysis and just determine how they want to use that information or whether they want to go through an analytical process of themselves.

PELOSI: Would you think that the agency -- if I may governor, that that entity should be able to task for getting additional follow- up intelligence on information they had received?

GILMORE: Yes, Congresswoman and we have recommended that to the Congress. Thank you, governor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congresswoman Pelosi.

Congressman Roemer?

ROEMER: Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Manno, the alleged terrorists Amad Rasam (ph) was stopped on the way to the Los Angeles airport in January of 2000. The FAA did some analysis of his bomb equipment what did you find with regard to that bomb equipment and did it relate to other terrorists trends or activities?

MANNO: I think what our bomb techs found when they looked at it was that there were some similarities in the timer that Rasam (ph) was in possession of and some of the timers that were used by Rumsi Useff (ph).

ROEMER: So, what you found at that point and when did you do the analysis. He was stopped in January, January 2000, when did the FAA make that tie to Useff (ph)?

MANNO: Well, what our bomb techs did, and I don't remember the exact date, but they worked with the FBI bomb data center to come to that conclusion. And, again, they were not identical. They were...

ROEMER: But, you made some conclusions that it was very similar to Useff (ph) who had helped devise the plot in the Philippines in 1995, to blow up airliners across the Pacific Ocean?

MANNO: Yes. However, the other components that he was carrying in the vehicle kind of indicated that what possibly might have been going after was a different type of target because possibly using a car bomb because it was a large amount of explosives, as opposed to the smaller more sophisticated devices that Useff (ph) had been working on.

ROEMER: So, I just want to see how you reacted to this. If you get for the committee how long it took you to put this together and when you did associate some of the similarities between the timer that Useff (ph) had and the timer that Amad Rasam (ph) was going to use, did you then disseminate this information to other law enforcement agencies, or did you have discussions with other groups outside the FAA?

MANNO: We had internal discussions with the people that look at counter measures. The way that we do security we did security in the FAA at the time was that we would assess the threat, collect all the information and then provide it to the operations and policy people within the agency who then looked at our existing measures to try to determine whether or not the baseline measures that we had in place would be able to counter the particular threat that had just been identified or whether additional measures would have to applied through the means of computer threat.

ROEMER: So you had these internal discussions, but the intelligence agencies had been brought into this plot, the Bajinca (ph) plot in 1995, why wouldn't you expand this outside the internal conversations within the FAA and go back to the intelligence agencies or the FBI and share this information, which I would think would be significant that this timer is very similar to something being used in a plot that involved a host of different airliners and had two or three key people associated with it with the Bajinca (ph) plot?

MANNO: Well, our bomb techs did work with the FBI, that's exactly who they...

ROEMER: How about the CIA and the intelligence people who had shared the information with -- or I guess it was the Philippines that had initially, according to public documents, shared the information with them?

MANNO: I don't know if the FBI went back to the CIA with that. I don't believe that we did in a formal way. That information...

ROEMER: Why wouldn't you, though? Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you be looking at all the different sources at this point to try to discover if you have a similarity to extend this through law enforcement channels and intelligence agencies to really get at the root of this?

MANNO: Well, again, our focus at the time was, because of the similarity that we had identified, was to try to determine whether this was what appeared to be some sort of a plot against aviation. The indications were not there other than the similarities of the timer. Useff (ph) had gone through training in Afghanistan, along with many, many others and this was a very common technique that was taught in the camps. So, that part of it in itself was not unusual. There was no other information that we were aware of that would tie Rasam (ph) at that time to a plot against aviation. It wasn't until much later...

ROEMER: I think I'm running out of time, if I haven't already. I would just say that rather it was tied to a plot; you're tying him to people. The equipment may be tied to people in the Philippines with similar intentions and I would have hoped that that would have been followed up on. And, I know my time has expired.

Thank you for the patience, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Good. Thank you, Congressman Roemer, and we will have a third round if you would like to continue to pursue that.

Congressman Gibbons, and Congressman Boehlert.

GIBBONS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me take off on just a little bit of a different approach to this intelligence sharing question that we've got going here today. There are two opportunities for the United States' government to interface with an individual who is attempting to either visit or immigrate to the United States. The first being, of course, our Counselor offices that are overseas and our embassies where this individual will approach to get a visa. The second is our port of entry, Customs or whatever.

Let me ask, and I don't know if this a question for the State Department and I don't see the Ambassador, but if anybody can answer, are all our counselor offices overseas equipped with the same systems, same databases and the same capability as each other would be? In other words, is it a uniform system that is available? And, obviously, there's going to be an individual speak over here, that could identify (inaudible).

(UNKNOWN): Yes, I'm going to invite Tony Eddison (ph) from the Bureau of Counselor Affairs who took the oath as I did at the start of the hearing and ask him...

GIBBONS: Sure.

(UNKNOWN): ... and ask him to respond to the question.

EDDISON: In the aftermath of the first World Trade Center bombing we were given authority to retain visa fees and used those funds for a major systems development and deployment exercise.

GIBBONS: So, we're talking in 1993.

EDDISON: Beginning in 1994, I believe.

GIBBONS: What's the current status today?

EDDISON: As of 1998 the platform was uniform worldwide and it remains that way today.

GIBBONS: All right. Let me ask then who provides counselor offices or the INS with the information necessary to make a judgment and evaluation of the acceptability of a visa applicant?

EDDISON: If I understand the question correctly, it's a combination of factors come into play there, of which the lookout information that's available to us through the Class system that's been discussed today is one of those factors. It's the primary factor for anti-terrorism information.

GIBBONS: So, all counselor offices have access to the data; can make a judgment based on what's in these database systems on every applicant for a visa?

EDDISON: Yes, it is physically impossible to enter data on an individual applicant into our system without generating the check against these databases as a background tasks. There's no...

GIBBONS: Including fingerprints as for other biometrics?

EDDISON: No, not fingerprints, except on the Mexican border.

GIBBONS: So, Mexico City is the only counselor office that does a fingerprint check or a fingerprint documentation?

EDDISON: Mexico City and our border posts along the Mexican border.

GIBBONS: OK. Let me go to the INS real quick like. What information is available on these individuals to our border or guards that are standing security on our borders? How do they know when somebody presents them with a document that it isn't false, that they are the right person, and this person is not a terrorist on one of our watch, whether it's NAILS (ph) or any other system?

GREENE: There are a couple of things that have happened that have improved that. One is now our access to the counselor database that allows us to pull up a picture and a copy of the non-immigrant visa application as it was executed overseas at the time that the visa was issued.

GIBBONS: And that's current on every border crossing?

GREENE: That's current on every border crossing, every port of entry. We also now are incorporating the IDENT system, which is the two print identification system into the IBIS system. We're expanding that usage. So, certainly, as was indicated by my State Department colleagues, along the southern border we can do that identification now at ports of entry, as well as between ports of entry and that's expanding to the northern border.

GIBBONS: Going back to the counselor in the last few minutes that I have, let me ask a question. Local law enforcement agencies have information about individuals that may go to a, their reattempt to get a visa if they've left the country, is that information inputted into the INS system, if so, how is it inputted and how long does it take for that information to get there?

EDDISON: This actually might be a question better addressed by my INS colleague, because they have more interaction with the domestic agency.

GIBBONS: OK.

GREENE: That's absolutely right. Our NAILS system, which is the primary lookout system for the INS is input primarily by field agents, either deportation officers, inspectors or special agents based upon information that they get from local jurisdictions with respect to convictions and facts that might disqualify them from being able to enter the United States again. So, that system goes in and I believe it's refreshed up into IBIS within 72 hours.

GIBBONS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Gibbons.

Congressman Boehlert?

BOEHLERT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Greene, how many non-immigrant aliens are there in the United States today?

GREENE: I don't know, sir. I know that it could be as high as a quarter of a billion that come in annually. I mentioned earlier it's half a billion transactions every year at our ports of entry, that's airports, seaport and land border ports. If you cut out the commuters and the returning citizens and so forth, that comes down to about a quarter of a billion. The non-immigrants could be half of that. We may, in fact, be able to give you numbers of the number of non- immigrants who are admitted on a yearly basis, but that would be historical data. I don't know what it is today at this moment.

BOEHLERT: So, the answer is, we don't know.

GREENE: That's correct.

BOEHLERT: Was is the estimate of that quarter of a billion, 250 million non-immigrant aliens in the United States that are out of status?

GREENE: Again, I don't think we know that. We do not know the answer. The information that we have, the systems that we have relied upon over the last 20 years are simply inadequate to give us an accurate picture.

BOEHLERT: Wouldn't you think this would be rather important information to have?

GREENE: It is, absolutely. And it is information that we're attempting to address by establishing this NSEERS process, which will give us an effective, biometrically-driven entry/exit system that will allow us to determine who has come into the United States and who has left.

BOEHLERT: All right, which leads me to the NSEERS program. On Page Four of you testimony you say, "Under NSEERS, INS is fingerprinting and photographing non-immigrant aliens who may potentially pose a national security risk upon their arrival in the United States." Who may potentially pose, is that a judgment call or is this all non-immigrant aliens?

GREENE: No, it's not all non-immigrant aliens at this point. NSEERS is being implemented on a phase basis. And, so, what we started at some port of entries and what is fully implemented as of today at all our ports of entry is the special registration process under the NSEERS system. That involves nationals of five countries who the attorney general has designated are either state sponsors of terrorism or require special registration as a result of this. It actually builds on a system that's been in place for a number of different countries for more than four years.

It is the first of a system or a set of steps that will allow us to fully implement an NSEERS system for all non-immigrants, but the special registration part deals strictly at this point with non- immigrants about whom the United States has a special concern.

BOEHLERT: You're striving toward 100 percent?

GREENE: That's correct.

BOEHLERT: And what's the anticipated date to achieve that 100 percent?

GREENE: I'm not sure that that's been settled yet. It's an interplay between how quickly we can do it and how much it'll cost.

BOEHLERT: Well, I mean, you have an idea?

GREENE: I don't have...

BOEHLERT: Is it two years, five years, 10 years?

GREENE: I don't have an idea, sir. The discussions are...

BOEHLERT: Wouldn't that be a good idea to have that idea?

GREENE: Yes, it would.

BOEHLERT: Could you provide the committee in a timely fashion some specifics to my line questioning, the specific questions?

GREENE: Yes, I'll be happy to.

BOEHLERT: Well, under what we already have in place, I mean it's a small fraction of a percent of what we hope to achieve.

GREENE: Correct.

BOEHLERT: I'm just trying to think none of the hijackers, the 19, would have been caught up in this NSEERS system would they, maybe one or two of them.

GREENE: It's unclear because in addition to the five countries there are also a series of discretionary registrations that might have caught some of them, but it would be speculative to say.

BOEHLERT: So, we have roughly 250 million, non-immigrant aliens in the country. And we don't know how many of them are out of status. Two things that I think we should know the answers to those questions. There doesn't seem to be a bell that rings anyplace or some sort of mechanism that's triggered that indicates someone is out of status. We don't have the foggiest idea if some of the -- these non-immigrant aliens are still here or they're someplace else. I think more and more what we're learning is we know what we don't know and what we don't know is a hell of a lot.

GREENE: Well, I think that's right. Systems were not designed to provide a foolproof way of tracking non-immigrants who came into the United States. And remember that according to INS estimates only 50 percent of the people who are considered to be illegal residents in this country come from non-immigrant visas. I mean the threat as you know from -- has always been conceived of unrestricted immigration along the southern border.

BOEHLERT: I'm sure. I'm well aware of that.

GREENE: That's been pretty much where the focus has been for a long time. And it really was the events of the attacks that prompted to us to look in a very concentrated way about how do we improve the systems that can track and monitor the people who are coming in here with legal visas.

BOEHLERT: But, we think we have something to improve it, but we don't have any idea how much it's going to cost, or when it's going to be implemented.

GREENE: No, I...

BOEHLERT: I don't mean to be sort of argumentative, but...

GREENE: No, sir, and I don't mean to leave you the impression that we don't know. I guess what I don't know and I know that the discussions are going on now about how to adjust pacing to finance to the amount of money. We'll just give you a full briefing on that when I get back and find out what that is.

BOEHLERT: I can't expect you to know everything, but it would be...

GREENE: Right.

BOEHLERT: ... it would be comforting to me if you had a better idea in this particular one because...

GREENE: And I apologize to you for that.

BOEHLERT: No apologies are in order. We're all on the same team trying for the same thing. We're trying to develop foolproof systems across the board. I just want to be helpful. Thank you.

GREENE: We can give you a very thorough briefing on that one.

BOEHLERT: Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Boehlert.

We'll now start a third round. I would like to use the history of a Kaleed Al Midhar (ph) to probe a few of my questions. Almitar (ph) was one of the participants in that January 2000 Summit of Al Qaeda that was held in Malaysia. He then entered into the United States two or three weeks thereafter and after a brief stay in Los Angeles, moved to San Diego. He was in San Diego by February of 2000.

To follow-up on Congresswoman Pelosi's question about what would we do if we had someone who had suspect background in terms of being a terrorist who happened to be in a community with a major U.S. military facility? Well, we now have that situation. Someone who we survailed at a summit of terrorists whose now in a community with major U.S. military interest. Was the, whoever was responsible for security of places like the San Diego Naval Air Station and whoever would be responsible for civilian law enforcement in the San Diego area, were they notified of the presence of a person who was a very highly suspect for terrorist activities individual? Do you know, Mr. Peez?

PEEZ: If you're talking about in August of '01?

CHAIRMAN: In February of 2000 when they arrived in San Diego?

PEEZ: In February 2000, absolutely not.

CHAIRMAN: Why would neither a Department of Defense official or a local government official have been notified of the presence in their community of someone who, just a few weeks earlier, had been a participant in the summit of terrorists?

PEEZ: You're asking basically the same question as why we did not watch list at the time and I think we've covered that in several sessions. We did not and that was our failure. It was not a separate decision that was made to share it with some rather than others. We do have our record traffic that says that the visa information, the multiple entry visa information was passed to the FBI in January of 2001, but that was the extent of our sharing at the time on that particular incident.

CHAIRMAN: And that was 10 months after the...

PEEZ: Excuse me, I said 2001, I meant January of 2000. But, that was the extent of our sharing at the time on this particular case.

CHAIRMAN: Assuming that someone was alert to the characteristics that I've just described, none not only just a garden variety terrorist, business someone who was high enough up to be invited to this high level meeting in Malaysia whose now in a major U.S. city, which happens to also be a very significant defense establishment. If someone were focused on that set of facts and alert, what would they be expected to have done?

PEEZ: I can tell you that under today's standards we would, indeed, put out a published intelligence report on Midhar's (ph) travel and the meeting in Malaysia that, indeed, would have gone to both Department of Defense and the regional command, in this case, Pacific command, that would have been responsible for the local security of a naval facility in San Diego.

CHAIRMAN: And would it have gone to civilian law enforcement agency.

PEEZ: Indeed, it would go to FBI and to several other departments that would...

CHAIRMAN: Including Commissioner Norris's counterpart in San Diego?

PEEZ: From our own practices, for that type of information, especially when we would not know where Midhar (ph) was entering into the United States, that it would be over to the FBI to decide which amongst the local police departments would get further information. That has been their call. That system is subject to change, but has not changed.

CHAIRMAN: I want to ask one more question about Midhar (ph). Midhar (ph) left the United States in the fall of 2000 and in June of 2001 he was in Jetta (ph), Saudi Arabia where he applied for either a new or a renewal of the passport, which he had, which had lapsed sometime previously. On his visa application he was asked this question, whether he had ever been in the United States, he checked no.

Now, he not only had been in the United States, but he had come through the Los Angeles airport with a valid U.S. passport at that time. What was the gap in the system that did not pick up the fact that he had just committed perjury by falsely answering the question as to whether he'd ever been in the United States when we must have had some documentation that he had been in the United States because he'd come through our immigration system?

PEEZ: When he applied we would routinely have searched his old passport for travel patterns. But, when he applied for this visa, based now on the automated record we can only assume he didn't submit the previous passport which would have shown that entry into the United States. So, we had nothing -- nothing in any of our systems to record the entry into the U.S., the departure from the U.S. that would have shown that he was lying on the application.

CHAIRMAN: Excuse me for taking another question. Did the people in Jetta have access to the information that this man had previously held a U.S. passport?

PEEZ: Yes, they would have known he had a previous U.S. visa.

CHAIRMAN: And is it standard procedure when a person is applying for a new visa or a new passport, the previous one having expired, to ask to see the previous passport?

PEEZ: Sure, if it comes to the attention of the interviewing officer it would have been standard. It was about three years prior to this reapplication.

CHAIRMAN: I mean is that a standard question that's asked? Have you ever had a U.S. passport?

PEEZ: Yes. Have you ever had a previous U.S. visa? It's on the application form.

CHAIRMAN: And a U.S. passport, or excuse me, a U.S. visa?

PEEZ: Correct, yes.

CHAIRMAN: Would it have been possible within our data system to have confirmed the correctness of the answer to that question?

PEEZ: Yes.

CHAIRMAN: But, you assume it wasn't checked in this case?

PEEZ: Right. I would assume it wasn't checked in this case.

CHAIRMAN: OK.

Congressman Goss?

GOSS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In the area of breaking news I've just been informed that there is a 10-year old whose having a birthday tonight, who is maybe a starting pitcher on a local baseball team whose mother happens to be sitting about three feet behind me. And I think it'd be very important that we wish Brian Neal (ph) a happy birthday and make sure his mother is there at the opening of the game, so my questions will be short.

The first pitch is at six, which is good news for our panel. The last of the series of questions that I wanted to get to was we've had a lot of testimony today about the frustration as a nation of laws and who we are that sometimes we haven't been able to get the things done that we might have wanted to get done to protect ourselves better. And we've perhaps errored a little bit on the side of caution, being a free democratic society that cherishes our civil rights. And that's not all bad news. The question is what improvements can we make if we need to. Now, if I've got it right in my notes, I believe Mr. Andre said that the laws were not the problem. The policies were the problem. And I think Mr. Greene suggested that we did have some problems with some of the laws and I suspect that the answer is both, that we do have problems with both.

And then we've had in previous panels a lot of discussion about in the intelligence community we call it risk aversion. And in the law enforcement community we call it don't rock the boat. And in various iterations, as we've gone through our discussions, it's come down to sort of a culture of it's not necessary to go too far down this road because it's probably a bigger threat to cause a fuss or have a bad photo op or whatever it is is going to cause my career more trouble or whatever the case may be.

So, why don't we just not do it? And there are probably very justifiable reasons. What I would like you to tell me is is that something that we legislate or try and legislate in this country? Or is that something that we just try and keep reflecting the will of the people we represent across the board as it changes? I am very much ceased with the impossibility of trying to draw a line somewhere that says we know where the line in the sand is exactly here where national security protection comes exactly up against your freedom to do what you want and your civil rights as an American citizen or a visitor in our country. I don't know where that line is exactly. I don't believe we've had any testimony that calls for any specific legislation, but if there is we'd like to know it because that's what we do. And if there is some way we can encourage the culture change to, I guess, exhort for more common sense and that might be the operative word. I would like to hear instruction form our consumers.

So, the floor is yours until the lights red.

Governor Gilmore, do you want to take a shot at that? You've tried it from the executive side.

GILMORE: Are you asking, Congressman, where the line should be drawn between additional security and...

GOSS: How much do you think we need to do in Congress to try and draw that line?

GILMORE: I think that the approach that Congress ought to take is to examine proposals for reforms because they're coming a mile a minute now after 9/11. Different proposals, structurally and otherwise and always test those against the question of whether or not it's going to mean a loss of civil liberties in the country. Or, whether it even has the potential of such. For example, we've taken a great deal of time in our commission focusing on the use of the military, not because we think there's anyone evil or bad in the military anywhere, but because 50 years from now if we begin to apply the wrong types of structures, somewhere up the road you may run into a problem. So, I guess my -- certainly my advice to the Congress would be to always be taking into account the potentialalities for the restrictions of civil rights and civil liberties based upon the reforms that are being urged upon you. Is that responsive, Congressman?

GOSS: It is responsive. It's a very difficult question for us, as you know. And we want to understand the culture at the frontlines of the working agencies and be supportive. And we want the osprey of the agencies and we want them to do their functions and understand their missions. We've given them conflicting orders. We tell one group of people this is all done on a need to know basis and then we're sitting here saying wait a minute, not so fast, I need to know, start to share. And we understand that there are conflicting signals coming out. And I guess maybe what I'm calling for is the political courage to do the right thing based on common sense at the right moment.

You can't legislate in my view.

GILMORE: I don't think people in our commission feel that intelligence sharing, either horizontally or vertically, is a challenge to the civil liberties of the country.

GOSS: You don't?

GILMORE: No. I mean it could potentially be. But, mostly it's a matter of getting proper information to people and getting them proper cleared. The more real danger is that we will put into place invasions of privacy or even law enforcement or military applications that will make us more secure, but in the end begin to impinge upon our civil liberties. For example, within our commission we recommended, for example, that the military never be first responder in a first response capacity, but always in support of a federal, civilian organization, civilian organization. And we only did that as safeguard. But we also think, by the way, that's based on a model that actually works.

GOSS: Thank you, governor. I don't disagree with what you say. I have a slightly different opinion about how hard it is to convince Americans that vertical information flow from the bottom up may not be big brother getting into their lives and vertical flow from the top down may not be big brother telling the locals how to do it. But, I think those are things we're going to learn to accommodate as we go along. And I thank you.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Chairman Goss.

Congresswoman Pelosi?

PELOSI: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know it's a long way from here to that baseball game. I'll try to make my five minutes within the five minutes and I know you will be a good chairman in that regard.

Gentlemen, again, thank you. I want to follow-up on my distinguished chairman, both of them, their lines of questioning. First on Chairman Graham, I'm worried about San Diego as well. I was asking information sharing to Mr. Andre earlier. But, as Mr. Peez (ph) said you've answered that question over and over again about why was the information not passed on. But, its' not just any city, it's a place where we have substantial military installations. And it seems to me, in those cases, maybe we have to be -- since force protection is our driving force here, especially before September 11, that we perhaps have to be more proactive where we have more exposure to know what is out there, whose going into certain places to the extent that we can when the port of entry is near those places. And certainly they are all over Southern California.

So, I don't know if that's possible. What I do know, following up on what Mr. Goss said is that before we start limited the civil liberties of the American people, we have to do what we're doing correctly. We can't miss something that is as clear as can be and then see we need to spy more on the American people so that we can get this right. We have to at least communicate the information that we do have and we have to collect it in, obviously, in a more sensitive way so we know the value of it. And communicate it to those who can analyze it in relationship to what else they know where the judgment is good on it.

So, I would hope that as we go forward, the easy out isn't to say we need to know plans and intentions of the American people. Certainly we do, but do we have to know that by spying on them or just understanding better some of the risks of people coming in and out who have clearly been associated with those who are up to no good when it comes to terrorism in the United States.

I was interested, Mr. Greene, in what you said to Mr. Boehlert about the resident -- the non-resident aliens coming into the United States, excuse me, non-immigrant aliens coming into the United States, a half a billion in a year, 250 million at any given time? No.

GREENE: Yes, don't. I mean...

PELOSI: Like doubling our population?

GREENE: The half a billion is the number of transactions.

PELOSI: Transactions. So, that could be 10 times for the same person?

GREENE: Yes. It could be commuters along the southern or northern border. It could be a Canadian coming over for milk or a job or that sort of thing. So, when you actually get down to the number of non-immigrant visa people who are coming in, it could be somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 million. It could be half of that. It's just the question that he asked was how many do we have now...

PELOSI: Yes.

GREENE: I don't know the answer to that.

PELOSI: OK.

GREENE: But, I can give you historical stuff on...

PELOSI: All right. But, you said we have to -- I think I wrote it down correctly; look at it in a concentrated way. Could you tell me right now how many people you have assigned to that?

GREENE: Well, there's a major NSEERS task force that there's some like seven or eight people from just within the headquarters in their disciplinary unit that's working on just building the NSEERS project. I don't how many are working on it from the Department of Justice. There are people on homeland who are engaged in the discussion now about...

PELOSI: Are we talking thousands?

GREENE: It's a good...

PELOSI: Tens of thousands, because we're talking about a quarter of a billion people, half a billion maybe?

GREENE: No. It's nowhere near on that scale in terms of how of our team that's building the NSEERS project. It's not thousands I know that.

PELOSI: Well, again, in this regard, globalization, of course, is with us and is the future. Our country, as all countries are invigorated and refreshed by the flow of people in and out. And we don't want to impede that dynamic, what that brings to us all, whether it's trade, education, whatever it happens to be. So, again, because we miss something over here, we want to curb what's going on over here. And, again, we have to make sure that people come into our country who are fully in compliance and don't come in for bad reasons unless we know about it and can stop then. But, again, there's something to be lost if we take the easy way out, which I think in the long run is maybe not the most successful way in terms of mission success.

GREENE: I could not agree with you more. And that really does get back to Chairman Goss's question as well about the challenge that we have. I mean there's no agency in Washington right now that is more risk adverse than the INS I think. I mean, you know, and part of that is really about determining precisely what we should be doing. We believe that what we should be doing is focusing on the terrorism. And that should be the highest law enforcement priority for the INS. And that's easy when you're dealing with a watch list. It becomes a much less -- much more difficult when you're dealing with that large group of people who we may not know anything about in terms of their support of terrorism, but who are coming here to either support an action or to commit an action themselves. And that's going to be the real challenge for us as we build towards this future.

So, that is the (inaudible).

PELOSI: I appreciate that, Mr. Greene. My time is expired. But, our country is great because it is the home of the brave and the land of the free.

GREENE: That's right.

PELOSI: It is great because it's a land of immigrants and we cannot...

GREENE: Absolutely.

PELOSI: ... damage any of that enthusiasm as we go forward.

GREENE: Absolutely.

PELOSI: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Pelosi.

Congressman Roemer?

ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I'm all for getting Eleanor Hill to a baseball game to celebrate a victory and a birthday party. And I want to give her plenty of time to get through the traffic to get out there. I was just asking the Transportation Security Administration about their efforts to collaborate and share information with regard to the Amed Rasam (ph) and the similarity in the timers.

Mr. Peez (ph), were you at CIA aware of these similarities?

PEEZ: This was actually before my tenure in the counter- terrorism center. This tidbit has not crossed my awareness. I will check for you to see if it arrived in CTC anytime in the last few years.

ROEMER: So, at this point, you're not aware that either checking back through cables or getting up to speed in your new position, going back over things, after 9/11, you're not aware of having ever seen this kind of information the Transportation Security Administration had?

PEEZ: I am not, but I would not want to apply that it did not arrive in our headquarters and that the real experts were not aware of it.

ROEMER: If you could get it to the committee, I'd appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Peez (ph).

Governor, very quickly, you said, just to be clear, that you had never been briefed as governor on security information with respect to the state of Virginia?

GILMORE: No, there was no routine to brief the governor on this kind of activity. Nor am I aware that it goes on. Now, it may happen ad hoc and incident-by-incident on a case-by-case basis, perhaps through the superintendent of the state police. But, the governor needs to be cut in.

ROEMER: I agree. And, this worries me a bit. Is it because of clearance problems or is it because we just don't have the communication and collaboration with our governors?

GILMORE: Both.

ROEMER: So, this is something we really need to address? Are we doing that right now is making sure that governors are brought in and cleared and getting access to some of this classified information right now? Or do we still have 50 governors that are waiting for clearance?

GILMORE: Waiting for clearance? They're not even being cleared.

ROEMER: So, none of our governors have access to this information?

GILMORE: Not that I'm aware of. Now, you know, there may have been some changes since I have left the governorship in post-9/11, but I don't think so.

ROEMER: And, Commissioner Norris, is that the same for people in similar positions for you as Commissioner of Police?

NORRIS: That is actually changing for us.

ROEMER: OK.

NORRIS: They have provided us applications; mine I now have a secret clearance. I don't know about other, generally with the help of, frankly, the CIA. There was some people helping me to push the clearances because I requested it. And the top secret is coming in the future.

ROEMER: Do you know how many other commissioners have secret clearance?

NORRIS: Actually, I don't.

ROEMER: I think we would be, you know, invaluably served to get that and make sure we expedite that for other commissioners.

And, governor, I think we should expedite for the governors of our states as well too.

GILMORE: It probably should be almost automatic, but, as it is with many people in the Congress. But, I think that the philosophy we're approaching is there's going to come a time in which this can't be ad hoc and incidental. There have to be systems set up that not only cross the horizontal lines, but also go up and down the vertical lines too and decisions have to be made about how many people and where they're going to be placed and what clearance they're going to have and then what routine information goes up and down. It has to become a system, not merely an ad hoc incidental type of arrangement.

ROEMER: And, as we've said all day a seamless communication system that breaks down this culture of not sharing.

My green light's still on, Mr. Chairman. So, I'm all done. Thank you very much; it's been a very informative hearing.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Congressman Roemer.

I want to say on behalf of the committee how indebted we are to each of you. This has been, as several of our members have stated, one of the most informative of our hearings in large part because we had such diversity of background and perspectives on the same set of problems. That's been very illuminating.

I anticipate that this is not going to be the last time that we will ask for your assistance because we are close to completing our hearing phase and then moving into the development of our recommendations, which, in my judgment, is the most important aspect of this inquiry. It's not enough to have some sense that you know what happened unless you're capable of then converting that into what changes should be made in order to avoid the tragedies of September 11 occurring again. And, we look forward to the opportunity to continuing to draw on your insights and wisdom to help us answer those questions.

Chairman Goss?

GOSS: Nothing more, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN: Congresswoman Pelosi?

PELOSI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Good. Thank you very much and now it's on to baseball.

Let me announce for our members and others that we will hold a hearing on Thursday at 10 a.m. in this room. The subject will be an experts panel, not dissimilar from the panel that we have just had, various individuals, including former directors of the CIA and FBI and other important intelligence agencies, as well as a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee will be on the panel to give us their insights as to what should we be recommending to the American people and our colleagues for reforms.

Thank you very much.

END

NOTES:
[????] - Indicates Speaker Unknown
[--] - Indicates could not make out what was being said.[off mike] - Indicates could not make out what was being said.

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