Testimony From the Joint Intelligence Committee

Question and Answer Session with CIA Director Tenet, FBI Director Mueller and NSA Director Hayden

The New York Times
October 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/politics/18ITEXT.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
[NOTE: this transcription has been corrected for numerous spelling errors, including the repeated confusion of Khalid and Khallad in one section]

SEN. GRAHAM: For hearings of the joint inquiry we have agreed that four members, two from each committee, will serve as lead questioners. Each will have 20 minutes. The designated lead questioner for today's hearings, in order, will be Senator Levin, Congressman Burr, Senator Thompson and Representative Harman.

Senator Levin.

SEN. LEVIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and first let me thank both our chairman and our vice chairman for their steady and their determined leadership of this effort and also add my thanks to Eleanor Hill and her staff for their extraordinary effort.

Mr. Chairman, after months of investigation and numerous joint inquiry hearings, both open and closed, a fair reading of the facts has led to a deeply troubling conclusion: Prior to September 11th U.S. intelligence officials possessed terrorist information that if properly handled could have disrupted, limited or possibly prevented the terrorist attacks. At crucial points in the 21 months leading up to September 11th this intelligence information was not shared or was not acted upon and as a result numerous opportunities to thwart the terrorist plots were squandered.

I've put up here a blue chart and handed each of you copies of those charts, which track two of the hijackers, al-Midhar and Alhazmi, who were the hijackers of American Airlines flight 77, which attacked the Pentagon.

I understand from Mr. Mueller's prior testimony of September 25th that the travel of the 12 terrorists who constituted, the, quote, "muscle," closed quote, for the 9/11 hijackings may also actually have been coordinated by al-Midhar.

The charts contain in chronological order well-established and well-known facts. The backdrop is that we know that in 1998 the CIA had essentially declared war on bin Laden and on al-Qaeda. Then in December, 1999, there was a heightened state of terrorist alert due to the millennium celebration. That was the environment in which the failures occurred.

An intelligence report was sent to the CIA and the FBI identifying four al-Qaeda operatives who had links to the East African U.S. embassy bombing, stating that they were planning to meet in Malaysia. The Malaysia meeting was a significant part, so much so that not only was the FBI notified but the director of the CIA was briefed about that meeting on numerous occasions.

The CIA monitored the meeting in Malaysia, which took place from January 5th to January 8th, 2000, 20 months before September 11th, and as a result of the monitoring the CIA learned some important information.

On January 5th the CIA knew the full name of one of the attendees at what they knew was an al-Qaeda operatives meeting. His name was Midhar. The CIA also had his passport information, including a multiple entry visa for the U.S. Our staff has concluded that that information was not distributed to the FBI but there's some dispute about that.

On January 9th the CIA learned the full name of Alhazmi, another attendee at the al-Qaeda operatives meeting, and learned that Alhazmi had left Malaysia on January 8th with Midhar on the same flight, seated together.

With this information and this state of concern, this high level state of concern and a declaration of being at war with al-Qaeda, the CIA did not put either Alhazmi or Midhar on the watch list and again according to our staff conclusion the CIA did not tell the FBI all that the CIA knew, including that Midhar had a multiple entry visa to the U.S.

I want to first focus, Mr. Tenet, on the question of the watch list that you've talked about in your testimony. What reasons specifically here -- I don't want just a general answer here that there was a lot of workload and so forth -- but what reason was given specifically by the CIA person responsible for putting that name on the watch list as to the failure to do so?

MR. TENET: For not putting the name on the watch list. Our judgment just in talking to everybody working at the time that there were uneven standards, poor training and we didn't get --

SEN. LEVIN: For that specific failure? All those reasons for that specific failure?

MR. TENET: Yes, sir, we did not -- everybody -- the people involved were people who have access -- who we've talked to, acknowledge that there were uneven practices, bad training and a lack of redundancy. The fact that they were swamped does not mitigate the fact that we didn't overcome that with either redundancy, a separate unit or better training for those people.

SEN. LEVIN: Have you identified the person or persons who were responsible to put that name on the watch list?

MR. TENET: We know who was working this case.

SEN. LEVIN: My question is, though, do you know the name or names of the persons who are responsible for putting those names on the watch list? That's my question.

MR. TENET: Yes, sir, I think I have.

SEN. LEVIN: All right.

Now, then we come to March 5th, same year, 2000, and the CIA learns some additional information, very critical information. On March 5th the CIA learns that Alhazmi had actually entered the United States on January 15th, seven days after leaving the al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia. So now the CIA knows Alhazmi is in the United States, but the CIA still doesn't put Alhazmi or Midhar on the watch list and still does not notify the FBI about a very critical fact, a known al- Qaeda operative -- we're at war with al-Qaeda -- a known al-Qaeda operative got into the United States.

My question is do you know specifically why the FBI was not notified of that critical fact at that time?

MR. TENET: The cable that came in from the field at the time, sir, was labeled information only and I know that nobody read that cable.

SEN. LEVIN: But my question is do you know why the FBI was not notified of the fact that an al-Qaeda operative now was known in March of the year 2000 to have entered the United States? Why did the CIA not specifically notify the FBI?

MR. TENET: Sir, if we weren't aware of it when it came into headquarters we couldn't have notified them. Nobody read that cable in the March timeframe.

SEN. LEVIN: So that he cable that said that Alhazmi had entered the United States came to your headquarters, nobody read it?

MR. TENET: Yes, sir. It was an information only cable from the field and nobody read that information only cable.

SEN. LEVIN: Should it have been read?

MR. TENET: Yes, of course, in hindsight. Of course it should have been read.

SEN. LEVIN: Should it have been read at the time?

MR. TENET: Of course, it should have been read.

SEN. LEVIN: All right. My question is do you know who should have read it?

MR. TENET: I don't know that, sir, but I can find that out.

SEN. LEVIN: Was somebody responsible to have read it?

MR. TENET: Well, there is a group of people -- somebody should have read it, yes, sir. We need to also look at where it came into, but I can find that out.

SEN. LEVIN: You don't know who that person is?

MR. TENET: I do not.

SEN. LEVIN: Should they have been watch listed at the time? Now we're talking March of the year 2000.

MR. TENET: Yes, sir. We've acknowledged that fact.

SEN. LEVIN: Okay. Do we know why at that specific time? Now we know that Alhazmi has entered the United States. This is another trigger point.

MR. TENET: Yes, sir.

SEN. LEVIN: They should have been watch listed. Who was responsible for watch listing at that time?

MR. TENET: I don't know the answer to that question, but I will provide an answer.

SEN. LEVIN: Next, on October 12th, 2000 bin Laden operatives attacked the USS Cole, the FBI, which investigated that attack, learned that a bin Laden follower, Khallad, was the principal planner of the Cole bombing and that two other participants in the Cole conspiracy had delivered money to Khallad at the Malaysian meeting.

Now, the FBI told the CIA about those facts. That information came from the FBI to the CIA. The CIA went back, reviewed the facts that they had about the Malaysia meeting again, and as a result of that review in January of 2001 the CIA determined that Khallad had actually been at the Malaysian meeting and that Midhar and Alhazmi then they knew, you knew had been involved with the planner of the Cole bombing, actually been with the planner of the Cole bombing at the Malaysia meeting.

The CIA again failed to put either Alhazmi or Midhar on the watch list or to notify the FBI that Alhazmi was in the United States.

And my question is do you know who was responsible for that failure?

MR. TENET: Sir, can I take you back to the facts for a moment?

SEN. LEVIN: Sure.

MR. TENET: First of all, in terms of the identification of Khallad, actually it was the FBI who provided the information to us because we were in a joint meeting at the time at a third country because we were running a joint case with somebody who identified Khallad. And indeed in January of 2001 the legal attache‚ from this third country writes messages to both our headquarters that after having been shown the surveillance photos of Kuala Lumpur, he made an identification of Khallad.

And so at that point, sir, both the CIA and the FBI know that Midhar was in Malaysia in this time period and that Khallad was in Malaysia at this time period as well.

SEN. LEVIN: Now, that's irrelevant to my point. What you did not notify the CIA of at that point --

MR. TENET: No, the FBI.

SEN. LEVIN: Excuse me, did not notify -- thank you -- the FBI of at that point is that you knew that Alhazmi was in the United States.

MR. TENET: That's correct, sir.

SEN. LEVIN: That's January now of 2001, another failure.

MR. TENET: Sir, there are three instances, as I note in my testimony, on three separate occasions.

SEN. LEVIN: I know. My question: Do you know who was responsible to notify the FBI at that time?

MR. TENET: I don't, but I'll find out for you.

SEN. LEVIN: All right.

Now we have a meeting in the year 2001 in New York City, and this is a meeting of a CIA analyst and FBI officials in the New York field office, which was the office investigating the Cole bombing in the FBI headquarters, including the FBI analysts on detail to the counter- terrorist center at the CIA.

The FBI agents on the Cole bombing pressed the CIA at that meeting for information regarding Midhar and the Malaysia meeting, but the CIA representative denied them that information. That's a very specific finding in the staff report that there was a refusal to share that information relative to Midhar in Malaysia, and as to why the CIA was tracking Midhar at a June 2001 meeting on the specific requests of an FBI agent in New York.

My question is do you know why that CIA agent refused to tell the FBI agent what the CIA agent knew when the FBI agent specifically said why are you tracking Midhar?

MR. TENET: We're going to have a disagreement on the facts here, and here are the facts as I understand them. There were three people who left Washington to go to New York that day. It was an FBI analyst from FBI headquarters, an FBI analyst from our counter-terrorism center and our analyst. They went up to discuss the Cole investigation. The FBI analyst from FBI headquarters brought the surveillance photos with her and at the end of the conversation, and I've now talked to two of the people involved, Senator, the FBI analyst from FBI headquarters handed the surveillance photos to the New York field office personnel. There was some discussion about them. Indeed, they were talking about different people. Midhar was not who they were talking about in this meeting.

When I asked our person at this meeting as to whether he was specifically asked about Midhar and Alhazmi, he has no recollection of the subject ever being directed to him or ever coming up. So there's a factual issue here and I've only talked to two of the people involved. I haven't talked to everybody involved.

SEN. LEVIN: Let me read you the staff report.

The CIA analyst who attended the New York meeting acknowledged to the joint inquiry staff that he had seen the information regarding al- Midhar's U.S. visa and Alhazmi's travel to the United States but he stated that he would not share information outside of the CIA unless he had authority to do so. That's what he told our staff. Do you disagree with that?

MR. TENET: Sir, I've talked to him as well.

SEN. LEVIN: Do you disagree that he said that to our staff?

MR. TENET: Well, no, I don't disagree he said it to your staff. I'm telling you what he told --

SEN. LEVIN: Did he tell you something differently?

MR. TENET: Yes, sir. He gave me a different perspective on the day.

SEN. LEVIN: So he told you and he told our staff something differently.

MR. TENET: Well --

SEN. LEVIN: Okay.

MR. TENET: -- but I think it's important, sir --

SEN. LEVIN: Yeah, but our time is limited so let me just keep going. That's the answer, he told you something differently from what he told our staff.

Mr. Mueller, Director Mueller, at that June 11th meeting, did the FBI know that Midhar and Alhazmi were at the January 2000 meeting of al-Qaeda operatives in Malaysia?

MR. MUELLER: I don't believe they did.

SEN. LEVIN: All right. So we still don't know in June of 2001 what the CIA has known for 15 months.

Director Mueller, after Midhar and Alhazmi were placed on the watch list by the CIA on August 23rd now, 2001, now they are on the watch list, it's August, it's less than a month before September 11th, the FBI opened an investigation on Midhar but not on Alhazmi. Why did the FBI -- why did you not try to locate Alhazmi?

MR. MUELLER: My understanding is that the information related to Mr. Alhazmi was included in the file of Midhar and that efforts were made to locate both of them.

SEN. LEVIN: Your understanding is that there was an effort made to locate Alhazmi --

MR. MUELLER: Well, let me just check. It's my understanding.

SEN. LEVIN: Okay. All right, I think that's something different from what is in our report, because the New York agent was asked to open an investigation in Midhar not on both.

MR. MUELLER: And my understanding is that we made an effort to identify and locate both individuals regardless of whether or not the file may have been opened under one as opposed to the other.

SEN. LEVIN: All right. Director Mueller, without alluding to names, I want to talk to you about the individuals that were mentioned in the Phoenix memorandum. There were ten individuals that were the subject of a UBL, Osama bin Laden related investigation. How many of those ten -- none of those now were hijackers but some of them were standbys perhaps, sleepers perhaps, ready to participate perhaps.

MR. MUELLER: We have no evidence of that, Senator.

SEN. LEVIN: All right. How many of them, in your findings, in your investigation, how many of the ten people listed in the Phoenix report were a part of the bin Laden conspiracy?

MR. MUELLER: My recollection, we have subsequently identified one of those as being associated with al-Qaeda. Let me just check one second. I would -- I have not checked. It's a question I did not necessarily anticipate, so I have not gone and checked whether or not the investigations of each of the other nine.

One I have in my mind was associated -- we subsequently came to find was associated with al Qaeda. As to the other nine, I don't believe we found that they have -- that any one of them has been associated with al Qaeda. But I would have to check to make absolutely certain.

SEN. LEVIN: This is a very critical fact. You got a Phoenix memo. You got 10 people listed by that FBI agent. You have a visit to the apartment house. You've got bin Laden pictures all over the apartment. You've got the agent saying, "This should be shared with the CIA." It wasn't shared with the CIA, that information. You've got 10 people named as going to flight schools, a great deal of suspicion. And, okay --

MR. MUELLER: I think that is reading into that memorandum more than is there. We absolutely had an investigation going on an individual, a principal individual, and other associates. But in terms of -- I think you have to take each of those individuals and weigh the evidence against each of those individuals. Not all of them were attending flight schools.

SEN. LEVIN: I agree. According to our information, as of May of 2002, four of those were under bin Laden-related investigations. Do you have any information from that?

MR. MUELLER: I would have to go back and determine. It may well be that they are the subjects under bin Laden. In other words, we could open a file, and in the file identify the individual as possibly an associate or a subject that should be investigated for the possibility of being associated with bin Laden. But that is far different from having evidence and information that the person is, in fact, a member of al Qaeda or associated --

SEN. LEVIN: How many are still under investigation for a bin Laden-related matter?

MR. MUELLER: Out of that Phoenix memorandum?

SEN. LEVIN: Yes.

MR. MUELLER: At least three.

SEN. LEVIN: I think that's highly significant information that you should be on top of. This -- okay.

MR. MUELLER: Well, Senator --

SEN. LEVIN: I'll just leave it at that.

MR. MUELLER: -- we have a number of investigations going around the country.

SEN. LEVIN: I'm talking about the Phoenix memo.

MR. MUELLER: Well --

SEN. LEVIN: I'm talking about the Phoenix memo. Let me ask both of you; I've asked you, Director Mueller, to release the Phoenix memo, to make it public, redacted, and to release the Minneapolis e-mails, redacted, and they've not yet been released publicly. Why not?

MR. MUELLER: Hold on one second. (Confers with staff.) Senator, to the extent that there is no classification issue, we have no objection to them being released. My understanding is they're going through declassification.

SEN. LEVIN: All right. I requested you to release them some time ago, and they should be released by now.

MR. MUELLER: Well, I don't believe necessarily that we are holding up the declassification process, Senator.

SEN. LEVIN: Well, then who is?

MR. MUELLER: I would have to check on that. But I don't -- we have not --

SEN. LEVIN: Well, the committees asked for this, too, by the way. This isn't just my personal request. The committee has asked for the release of these documents, redacted, made available to the public. If we want to change the way things operate around here, we're going to have to be open and we're going to have to hold some people accountable.

Last question: Director Tenet, how many people have been held accountable for failures?

MR. TENET: I haven't held anybody accountable yet, sir.

SEN. LEVIN: Director Mueller, how many people have been held accountable for failures?

MR. MUELLER: Well, it depends on your definition of accountable, but I would say -- I would say that I have not held somebody accountable in the sense of either disciplining or firing somebody.

SEN. LEVIN: All right.

MR. MUELLER: I have made changes as a result of what this committeehas found and as a result of what we've found in our investigation of what we didwell and what we did not do well in the days and the months prior to September11th.

SEN. LEVIN: If changes are going to be real and are going to stick, in addition to all the structural changes that you've talked about and all the other things which you've described, we need openness. We need documents to be released, which should have been released by now, including the Phoenix memo and the Minneapolis e- mails. We've waited a year now for those.

And I believe people who failed in their responsibilities have got to be held accountable. This is not a matter of scapegoating. This is a matter ofaccountability. There has been, I believe, too little effort made to pinpoint the responsibility. You don't even know the names of the people who were responsible for failures, and no holding people accountable. We're not going to have real change unless we have that. And I'll close with that.

MR. MUELLER: May I respond to that, Senator?

SEN. LEVIN: I think you should.

MR. MUELLER: May I respond to that?

SEN. LEVIN: It's up to the chair, but I'd be happy to have you --

MR. MUELLER: When it comes to accountability, you take something like the Phoenix memorandum that came back into headquarters. There were two analysts in two separate units that looked at that. The procedures in place atthat time did not require the unit chief or the section chief to review that particular memorandum.

Now, I am not going to take in an analyst who is doing what she or he is supposed to do under those procedures and hold that person, quote, "accountable."

SEN. LEVIN: I'm not suggesting you should -- only the people who you find failed. I'm not suggesting that if someone didn't fail you hold them accountable. It's where someone, in your judgments, have failed, there should be some accountability. That's all that I'm suggesting.

MR. MUELLER: But going back to accountability, it is important, I think, to recognize that we have to put into place procedures which assure accountability. And one of the things I mentioned in my opening statement was the requirement that the accountability be at headquarters as opposed to not being diffused in the field. So I think we are addressing accountability, appropriately so.

SEN. LEVIN: I would ask unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman, that my list of the CIA failures and the FBI failures relative to these matters be placed in the record at this time.

SEN. GRAHAM: Is there objection?

REP. GOSS: Mr. Chairman, I don't object to it, but I think that they -- it would be noted that they are as prepared by Senator Levin.

SEN. LEVIN: That's correct. It's right on the chart that way.

SEN. GRAHAM: Without objection, so ordered. Our next questioner will be Congressman Burr; but before that, a couple of announcements. We now are past the originally-scheduled break time. We've done a survey of our members and there is a general consensus, although not unanimity, that we proceed without a lunch break.

I'm going to suggest that, in deference to our panelists, who have been with us now for more than two and a half hours, that we have a break of five minutes and then we'll reconvene with Congressman Burr to be the first questioner.

Once we complete the designated questioners and turn to the five- minute questions by individual members, let me list the first six who will question: Senator DeWine, Congressman Hoekstra, Congressman Peterson, Congressman Bereuter, Congressman Roemer and Senator Lugar. Those will be the six who will question immediately after the conclusion of the designated questioners. We will take a five-minute recess.

(Recess.)

SENATOR GRAHAM: If we could locate our panelists --

Our next designated questioner is Congressman Burr.

REP. RICHARD BURR (R-NC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, my thanks to the ranking members. In addition, let me take this opportunity also to thank the joint inquiry staff under the direction of Eleanor Hill, for a difficult process they have gone through, but one that has been very effective.

Mr. Chairman, I am convinced that these public hearings were created to explore what if anything went wrong in the days and the events that led up to November -- excuse me, September 11th.

I am convinced that additional review is likely and probably needed in that we will establish an independent commission to carry on the work of this jointinquiry, and to review other agencies that were not the focus of this current inquiry. What's gone unmentioned until today -- and I'd like to reinforce it -- is how many times the system worked. Most members of this inquiry have spent time across this country and around the world with our intelligence community and law enforcement individuals inquiring about what they knew and when they knew it; but, more, importantly, what they needed. What we heard was crucial I think to this inquiry. But what we saw was invaluable to the American people -- members of our intelligence and law enforcement community working unthinkable hours in primitive surroundings without family or friends -- things we all take for granted.

I mention this to my colleagues, because our focus shifted for the last 12 months to what happened. Their focus has been, and continues to be, on protecting the American people from the evil that exists globally. Though mistakes were made that contributed to the 9/11 attack, the men and women who work on our, the American people's, behalf around the world do this with the resources and authorities that we supply. And let's not forget they are the best in the world. As this committee -- as this inquiry hands off the review to acommission, I hope we will as members refocus on what we can do to complement the dedication of so many around the world with the resources that fill the gaps that all of us know exist.

Let me ask you: One year later, in hindsight, what would you have done differently?

MR. TENET: I think that personally when I think about this, the one thing that strikes me that we all just let pass from the scene after the millennium threat was this fellow who tried to cross the border from Canada into the United States. There were no attacks, there were no Americans kills. We didn't have any hearings. We didn't talk about failures. We didn't talk about accountability.

We just assumed the system would keep working because it prevented the last attack. He tried to cross the border, and I think one of the things that everybody should have done is to say, What does this mean? -- more carefully -- rather than just moving from this threat to the next threat, assuming it had been disrupted. What does it mean for the homeland? Should we have taken more proactive measures sooner? Hindsight is perfect. But it is the one extent that sticks in my mind.

Second, and again hindsight is perfect, we should have taken down that sanctuary a lot sooner. The circumstances at the time may have not warranted it, the regional situation may have been different. And after 9/11 all I can tell you is we let a sanctuary fester. We let them build capability. And there may have been lots of good reasons why in hindsight it couldn't have been done earlier or sooner. And I am not challenging it, because hindsight is always perfect -- but we let them operate with impunity for a long time without putting the full force and muscle of the United States against them.

I just heard a discussion about which one of my people is accountable. I need to tell you something. We have gone through this exercise about how many people and how do you count them. And the truth is the people that have been working this are absolute heroes. And if I reflect back on my own responsibility, I tripled the size of CTC, quadrupled the budget -- in hindsight, you know, I wish I said, Let's take the whole enterprise down and put 500 more people there sooner. I couldn't make that choice at the time, because of all the other competing things I had to do that everybody would hold be responsible against failing for. But in hindsight, you know, I wish we had thrown more people at it in some way to give those people the relief, because you know the tempo and the pace and exhaustion, notwithstanding the fact that on the watch list issue procedures may have not been perfect, it's not an excuse. They were exhausted. There were never enough of them. There were never enough of us, period, across the range of targets we cover. So I think about that as well.

The other thing I would say to you, quite frankly, is there was never a systematic thought process to think about how you play defense. It comes back to the guy trying to cross the border. You can disseminate all the threat reportings you want. You can do the strategic analysis about airplanes. You can do the strategic analysis about car bombs, truck bombs, assassination attempts, fast boats and everything else, and you can put all that out there to people. Unless somebody is thinking about the homeland from the perspective of buttoning it down to basically create a deterrence that may work, your assumption will be that the FBI and the CIA are going to be 100 percent flawless all the time, and it will never happen -- notwithstanding all the improvements we have made with your help. It is not going to happen. And I think one of the things that we have learned is in hindsight: the country's mind-set has to be changed fundamentally. No more sighs of relief. We are in this for a long time. We have to get about the business of protecting the country with the private sector, the chiefs of police, the state and locals now, because the threat environment we find ourselves in today is as bad as it was last summer -- the summer before 9/11. It is serious. They have reconstituted. They are coming after us. They want to execute attacks. You see it in Bali, you see it in Kuwait. They plan in multiple theaters of operations. They intend to strike this homeland again, and we better get about the business of putting the right structure in place as fast as we can.

REP. BURR: Director Mueller?

MR. MUELLER: Well, looking back at it and seeing what our greatest vulnerability was in retrospect, it was the fact that we had not hardened our cockpits. If we had assumed that hijackers on a plane will want to get the plane to the ground. We, unlike the Israelis with El Al, did not harden our cockpits. And all of the warnings that we got probably would not have led us in that environment to take the step of requiring airlines to harden the cockpits to prevent hijackers from coming in and taking over planes and crashing them into buildings. That is, in retrospect, when you look back at it, you ask what could have been done to prevent this attack -- that is the one thing that as a country, as an industry, that could have been done to protect this type of occurrence.

REP. BURR: Whose responsibility would that have been?

MR. TENET: Can I say something to you, sir?

REP. BURR: Yes.

MR. TENET: The thing is unless - Bob, excuse me - unless the program is systematic, they watch all of this carefully. It's not just about fixing one thing. You have to think about it from a systemic perspective. It's not just harden the cockpits. You have to look at the whole system. So if it is not being done simultaneously, the terrorist just sits back -- you look at how these people behaved, you understand how they have collected data against an open society for years -- it's not just one thing or one system.

MR. MUELLER: For the Bureau, from the perspective of the Bureau, the two I think critical changes necessary were, one, to adopt a new way of looking at managing cases. The Bureau traditionally has run cases through office of origin -- each individual special agent in charge is in charge of the cases that arise in that particular field office or that division, and there can be discussion and tension as to who gets the office of origin. Well, New York did a terrific job as office of origin for UBL. But New York is one field office. When you are looking at international terrorism, it is important for us as an institution to have centralized all information relating to UBL, whether it comes from Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine, or Miami, or from Hamburg, Germany, or someplace else. Centralized -- not only centralized information flow, but also centralized accountability for assuring that investigations, wherever they may pop up, have the required manpower to be addressed. And we as an institution have over the years placed the accountability in the field offices where on a national program, where we face a national security threat, the accountability in my mind should be at headquarters. That is coupled with the necessity of having the information in a centralized database with a sufficient number of analysts, and those analysts having the capability to generate the reports that an intelligence agency has traditionally done. We have not filled that void in the past. We have to do a better job of gathering our intelligence, analyzing that intelligence, and disseminating that intelligence. And those are the two critical items I believe that the Bureau has to address in order to prevent -- do the best we can to prevent another circumstance such as that which happened on September 11th.

REP. BURR: Director Tenet, there are a number of things that we saw in the '90s that would suggest that the likelihood of an attack was greater in every several years that happened. But there is no doubt that you personally believed that we had reached a new level in December of '98 when you made a statement that we were declaring war on al Qaeda. From the time that you made that declaration, what specific things changed within the CIA to reflect your concern over an imminent attack?

MR. TENET: Well, first of all, you actually had a strategic plan that you put in place about how to attack the target, whose plan was not only to collect more intelligence, but to get in the sanctuary and attack it, and gain as much intelligence as you possibly can. I mean, we have heard all these stories about, well, they didn't speak the languages, they couldn't get in the targets. Number one, you have to have a plan. You have to hold yourself accountable to the plan. You have to personally lead the execution of the plan. We put more people on it. We put as much money. We asked you for more money. We asked the administration for more money. We created a worldwide coalition of partners who we relentlessly badgered to say you have to be in this fight with us, to augment our numbers.

And the other thing is is you have to remember it's not just what goes on in headquarters in the center; it's what's going on in the field, and trying to grow more case officers while you are fighting this -- trying to grow more analysts that you surge overseas, try to resurrect the clandestine human capability that quite frankly everybody had ignored, and we were in terrible shape.

So the whole focus is build your infrastructure and get after this problem, and bring as many people to the fight as you possibly can around the world to augment your own numbers. And keep your eye focused on the target, and figure out what the right balance is between the people at headquarters and the people in the field, to get the tools out there where the operations are run, where the tracing needs to be done, the technical operations. And all I can tell you is if you see the pace of operations that we are sustaining today, it's because the foundation was built, the plan was in place, and the dollars that have shown up have made an enormous difference in terms of flexibility. What we still don't have are enough people. So we are going to rob -- we are going to keep robbing people. We have 900 people in the Counterterrorism Center today. It's probably not enough. We have got hundreds more sitting overseas working this target almost exclusively. And what we need to keep calibrating is how much more can we do to do everything we know how to do to stop the next attack.

REP. BURR: Director Mueller, in the '90s we had the World Trade Center bombing in '93. We had the threat of airline use for attacks that came out of the trials in '95. We had the threats on the New York tunnels in '95. And I think both you and Director Tenet have alluded to others. At an earlier hearing, Dale Watson, the head of CT at the F.B.I., said prior to 9/11 there was a 98 percent likelihood the attack would be abroad. Given the facts just covered, and the targets being domestic, what process do you understand that the F.B.I. went through to come to a conclusion that there was an only two percent likelihood that an attack would happen domestically here in the United States?

MR. MUELLER: I am not actually certain as to how we -- how Dale came to the two percent. I do believe, and I have heard, not being myself familiar with it or familiar with the warnings that were coming out during the summer leading up to September 11th -- and my understanding, and I think George can talk to it perhaps more than I -- most of those or many of those warnings related to attacks overseas, and that may have skewed the analysis to believe that because we are getting these warnings in, they are talking about attacks overseas, there is less of a likelihood they will be in the United States.

REP. BURR: Well, I think even Director Tenet said earlier one of the biggest mistakes was here we caught somebody crossing the border and we didn't ask enough questions or suspect what else might be there that was targeted here. We had already had example after example after example of domestic targets, whether the attacks were thwarted or not. And I guess my question is more what do we currently do within the FBI to analyze what the domestic threat is?

MR. MUELLER: There are a number of levels. I would reiterate it's not just the FBI, because part of one of the I think valid considerations or concerns are over the years is that we have treated our intelligence and law enforcement on the one hand separate from our foreign intelligence. In other words, we have a CIA that looks overseas; we have the FBI that looks within the United States. And for a long time that worked, where you didn't have an issue such as counterterrorism, which floods across borders. And so when we look at the threat against the United States now, we take into account issues such as the bombing in Bali. That is significant with regard to the threat within the United States. We did not always do that, I don't believe. Apart from that, we look at the vulnerabilities within the United States. We look at the various investigations, both preliminary and full, that we have around the United States, to determine whether or not there is any threat information that comes out. Where we have an issue that comes to the fore, where we believe that there needs to be additional analytical research given to it, we now give it that analytical research. If you can recall back in the wake of September 11th there was some belief that there was the possibility of using crop dusters, and that had come out in a couple of threat warnings. And when that happens, we pull everything relating to crop dusters. We alert each of our field offices to go out and coordinate with each of the fields. When something like that comes along, we utilize both our people in the field as well as our analytical capability to put together a picture of what the actual threat is, and integrate it with what George has from his people overseas.

REP. BURR: Let me stop you there. I am unfortunately running out of time, and there are a couple other areas I need to try to cover. Director Mueller, we had the chief of police from Baltimore testify at one of the open hearings, and I think both you and Director Tenet, as well as I think most members on this inquiry, would say that we had a breakdown of communication and an inability to disseminate information, and that contributed in some way, shape or form to September the 11th. This chief of police said, "I thought after September the 11th things would change, and the communication between federal and local would get better." And the fact was he came to testify to say that it hadn't. Is that a surprise to you? And what is being done to try to open up that line?

MR. MUELLER: Well, I did indicate in my opening statement that there were selected witnesses called to testify. I don't believe that this particular witness is representative of the feeling in the field. Does his testimony surprise me? I would say probably not. But I will tell you every time that I have -- and I have reached out to this particular individual in the past and asked him to call me if there are any concerns. Whenever I have seen either publicly or intestimony before this committee or another committee that there is a police chief who is not getting what he or she wants, I have called -- picked up the phone and called them to try to address those concerns.

REP. BURR: But it is the intent of the FBI to open those lines of communication?

MR. MUELLER: And let me finish by saying that I got -- and I don't know whether -- I am not certain when this testimony was -- it was probably in September. But it's a letter from William Berger, the president of the IACP. And the letter praises us for the changes we have made to address this particular problem. And I'll just read one paragraph: "It is my belief that the steps you have taken have been very responsive to these concerns, and clearly demonstrate the FBI's commitment to enhancing its relationship with state and local law enforcement in improving our ability to combat not only terrorism, but all crime."

I was at the IACP two weeks ago. I talked to the hierarchy. And I believe that they are supportive. There are isolated individuals throughout the United States who do not believe we are doing enough, and there are areas where we still have a ways to go -- getting clearances for chiefs of police, exchange of information all the way down, and getting it back up. We have a number of Joint Terrorism Task Forces that are working exceptionally well around the world, and I think if you went to nine out of ten, or 99 out of 100, or 55 out of 56, you will find that states and locals police are very supportive of the relationship. There will always be one -- there will always be two -- and we try to address them as they come along.

REP. BURR: Director Tenet?

MR. TENET: Well, I think -- here's the place that I think we can be very helpful to Bob and the FBI. I mean, look -- let me just put it in a couple of ways. There's nothing ambiguous about the strategic threat or targets they are thinking about or what they are looking at. It's not ambiguous any more. Who are the most important people in the battle? The most important people in the battle are the people on the street in localities around the country who actually know their street, actually know their neighborhood, actually know people who are coming in and out of those neighborhoods. And what we need to do is basically if you build a system that basically is based on the old rules, then we are not going to meet their needs. And we need to give them products that are content rich, that reveal nothing about sources and methods and methodologies, that allows them to understand what we're looking at so they can be attuned to what they need to do to help us. It's critical for this to succeed.

And some of the things we're doing together, there's a lot of strategic analysis, target-based analysis, all kinds of papers we've written, sharing with the FBI. We need to bring those people in, sit them down, educate them, and then provide training to their people about how to think about this target. And they've got a lot of other things to do. But the smartest guy is the cop on the beat, because he hears and sees things that nobody in the Washington bureaucracy is ever going to see.

REP. BURR: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, you have been extremely generous with the time. I would only ask, as I end my questioning, I wanted to get into the communications between CIA and FBI and the FAA. We have tried for some weeks now to get from both agencies the specific communications that took place in the calendar year of 2001 from either of the agencies specifically to the FAA or to airlines. And if you two directors would help us at pushing that a little bit within your own organizations, so that we can look at those documents and understand better what was shared with the FAA and/orairlines, it would be helpful.

MR. TENET: We will do that for the record, Mr. Chairman. We do know the other thing you need to be aware of is there was in this time period, and continues to be, a very active counterterrorism group down at the NSC who convened all the stakeholders, review the bidding.

And, in part, I think there were two advisories issued last summer. I mean, there was nothing specific, although there was a heightened period of alertness. And the result was two advisories. But, no, we didn't have a specific to help them. And I think that we have FAA representatives in our center. And we'llcome back to you, because this is where homeland security is really going to make a difference.

REP. BURR: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Congressman. Senator Thompson.

SEN. FRED THOMPSON (R-TN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you very much, and thank you for your public service.

Mr. Tenet, I'd say to you that homeland security will make a difference if it ever passes. I was stricken by the proposition earlier by one of the questions that we should have accountability. And, frankly, I agree with that concept. But I must say that if the type person in question was a part of the HomelandSecurity Department, under current law you could look forward to one year's notice of their deficiencies, several levels of appeal, several hours or days before appeal examiners, and an average of about 18 months before you could do anything with that person.

Now, this is the Department of Homeland Security that we're debating right now. And we've just been told by the director of the CIA that we're about at the same level of concern as we were last summer and we're debating issues like that as to how many levels of appeal someone should have or whether or not the new office should have the flexibility to devise a new system that might have some semblance to this century. But we haven't gotten there yet. But perhaps your testimony today will help us get there.

I might ask you, Mr. Tenet, in view of your analysis of where we are incomparison to last year, I take note of what I believe I recall is the level of warning out of the Office of Homeland Security, a yellow level, I believe, nationally. It doesn't seem that that's really consistent with what you said. Do you think the level should be higher, or are we talking about different things?

MR. TENET: Sir, I'm going to be -- Tom Ridge and I will be meeting this afternoon. He's already taken measures in specific sectors where we're most worried about. There will be another discussion this evening and tomorrow.

But I would note to you, when you see the multiple attacks that you've seen occur around the world, from Bali to Kuwait, the number of failed attacks that have been attempted, the various messages that have been issued by senior al Qaeda leaders, you must make the assumption that al Qaeda is in an execution phase and intends to strike us both here and overseas. That's unambiguous as far as I am concerned.

The governor has taken measures already in specific areas where the intelligence was most credible and in sectors that we're most worried about. And so we'll continue to talk about this. But I'm deeply concerned about where we are and the time period ahead of us.

SEN. THOMPSON: So you're looking at concerns both within the United States, continental United States, and abroad.

MR. TENET: Sir, one of the things that we can never forget is the specificity of what we see overseas may not be matched by the specificity of what you see here. You should go back to the narrative before 9/11, and you saw what was going on overseas.

You must make the analytical judgment that the possibility exists that people are planning to attack inside the United States, multiple, simultaneous attacks. We are the enemy. We're the people they want to hurt inside this country. So we extrapolate. But in the world I live with, you have to pay a lot of attention to what's going on overseas.

SEN. THOMPSON: Well, I don't think you could be any clearer, Mr. Tenet. And I think you were pretty clear in the summer of last year. I don't know, in my recollection, how public you were about that, but my recollection is that within the intelligence community and with regard to the administration and others, you made that assessment at that time, too. Is that correct?

MR. TENET: Yes, sir.

SEN. THOMPSON: Let me ask you, along those lines, something that I think that we're all wondering, and that is what we have a right as a nation to expect out of our intelligence community. It seems to me that on occasion the community has gotten very, very good intelligence. My recollection is that before the attack on the USS Cole that we had a lot of information, that we were in danger in that area. We knew that Yemen was a hot bed. We knew that our presence was targeted and all that.

Before September 11th of last year, we also had lots of information; in fact, had lots of patterns, patterns, dots within a sea of patterns and dots, but yet there were some emerging patterns such as New York, such as Washington DC, such as our infrastructure, such as airplanes, things of that nature. And it built pretty much to a crescendo right at that time.

So it seems to me like that on more than one occasion we have gotten alot of information. A lot of it is in the ball park. A lot of it turns out to be good information, and that we've even been able to separate it out from all of the vast volumes of information that come in. But we can't pinpoint times and places.

We all know how difficult that that is. We all know that this information is coming in along with lots and lots and lots of other information. One of you gentlemen said in times past that you were actually drowning in information. We also had a lot of general information, I might add, about the nature of the attack, the fact that Osama bin Laden had held a press conference in '98 saying he was going to attack us. You declared war in '98. In effect, all of that is out there.

And yet the question is, how much good does that do us unless we can take that next step? Are we entitled to expect that next step? What do we have a right to expect of our intelligence community with regard to predicting time and place of a major terrorist attack? Mr. Tenet, I'll ask you first.

MR. TENET: It is the most difficult thing to do is have that date, time and place of event. We have -- you have to be able to take all this data. You have to be able to then analytically assess a target set that it may be applied against. You have to go protect that target set, because the truth is there'll be dates and times and all kinds of information, and it'll never happen on the date and time. And then the date and time will elapse, and then people will basically say, "I guess it's not going to happen."

You have to expect us to tell you honestly, in strategic terms, "This is where I think the sector of the attack is going to be. This is what I know their training and methodology has been. This is my best judgment about what you have to go protect. Go protect it."

Now, in the overseas environment today, I mean, it would be useful at some point to come out and sit down. There's a great deal of specificity overseas about places and times and events, and the pattern of racing to stop it has been pretty successful.

You go back and look at this recent French tanker and the reporting out there on the French tanker was two or three months old, but it was there. This is a place and a location that we are worried about commercial shipping and tanker traffic. And so you see it stretches out over time.

What we owe you always and what we have to work harder to do is our best strategic judgment about what the "it" is.

SEN. THOMPSON: Well, are we getting any closer?

MR. TENET: Yes, sir.

SEN. THOMPSON: You talked about isolating sectors, because before September 11th, with all of that information out there that you had collected, you still weren't at all sure that it was going to be domestic. In fact, I think it's fair to say most people thought it would be foreign.

And right up until very close to the end, you're talking about against the United States or Israeli interests. We weren't even sure it was United States. So are we getting any closer to pinpointing the sector, the country, domestic or foreign, city, anything of that nature?

MR. TENET: Sir, you're getting -- by virtue of what you've done in Afghanistan, by virtue of the over 3,000 people we've taken into custody around the world, by virtue of the senior leadership that we are all getting information from today, the texture and quality, when coupled to the real-time intelligence collection, is an order of magnitude different than it was before 9/11.

The quality in your knowledge is miles down the road, and the pace of operations around the world has given us an enormous amount of information that really allows us to think about this in a much more strategic and focused way. And we are getting better.

But to come back to your homeland security point, you'd better get that done, because the strategic threat is unambiguous. You'd better have the mechanism in place to start locking down where we can tell you. We think, with some high confidence, we can work with the private sector and go through sectors and identify vulnerabilities and say, "Go lock it down now. Don't wait forus to come tell you it's on top of you," because you can't work that way, sir.

SEN. THOMPSON: I might point out, too, that some of the things we're trying to do in homeland security will not be within any continuing resolution. And passing of continuing resolutions is just going to -- even if we do something later, is just going to move the solution further down the road.

Under the category of things we have learned, I'd like to try something out on you and get your various reactions, anyone who wants to react. It seems that our nation is dangerously slow to react to a major threat to our national security. You mentioned sanctuaries.

As I look at this in terms of accountability, I look at a lot of different places. I look at the executive branch. I look at the legislative branch. I look at the organizations that you gentlemen represent. But with regard to the executive branch, we watched -- correct me if I'm wrong -- we watched Osama bin Laden build an army and indoctrinate, train and build an army, basically, for five or six years in Afghanistan. Did we not?

MR. TENET: Yes, sir.

SEN. THOMPSON: Can we -- if we had a perfect intelligence community here, could we protect ourselves if we allowed sanctions such as that?

MR. TENET: No.

SEN. THOMPSON: Well, moving down a little bit further, we know that it's not just Afghanistan. We know that there are friendly countries, friends of ours, that, to one extent or another, are allowing terrorist presence. They allow free passage. The Bremer Commission has pointed this out. We depend on them, as you have pointed out, and have depended on them for some of our successes and cooperation.

But I wonder if, regardless of what kind of cooperation we might get onindividual cases, these so-called friendly countries or allies, can we fully address the problem until we convince those countries, many of them of growing Muslim populations -- I'm not sure that's going to reverse itself -- some of them under political pressures, until they start cooperating more with us?

I noticed in 1996 Congress authorized the president to delineate these countries as not cooperating fully. I don't know that that's been really utilized at all. Can we give friendly countries a pass on this? Are we inviting another level of sanctuary? While it might not be a country taken over, but it doesn't have tobe in order to pose a big danger. Where do we stand on this?

MR. MUELLER: Sir, I would say that, number one, we do not have the luxury of basically walking away from any of these places, not continuing to press them to do better all the time. There's no alternative. So engagement is absolutely the key here.

In the pre-9/11 environment, there were lots of people around the world who believed that this was all about either killing Americans or killing Israelis. "It's not my problem." Now everybody's mindset has now been transformed. And you've got to do this with the carrot, and if there's a stick, you have to have a stick.

But we have to stay engaged in places where you could -- you know, we could be 100,000 people all around the world. You need to get into those places and have those societies change their laws. And there are a series of policy questions here, sir, as well in terms of how the transformation of these societies occurs so that they don't remain as feeding grounds of terrorists. But you've got to engage.

SEN. THOMPSON: Well, let's move to Congress. It seems to me that we have had national intelligence estimates at least since the mid '90s telling us about our vulnerabilities, mentioning vulnerabilities of places like Washington DC and New York. We've had various commissions talk about this.

We've been very slow to react while some individual voices -- I remember Senator Lugar back in the presidential campaign of the mid '90s was talking about these things. Nobody paid any attention to those things. National-security issues were like 3 percent in the public-opinion polls. And were sponded -- both branches of government responded accordingly.

You mentioned our history in terms of appropriations. And I wish you could clarify, perhaps all of you gentlemen, this issue a bit for me. I look at these charts that you have there and I see chart three, I believe, "Counterterrorism money appropriated to the intelligence community." And I know we can't talk about real numbers here. You got the big supplemental in '99.

MR. TENET: Sir?

SEN. THOMPSON: Yes.

MR. TENET: I don't have your charts, but --

SEN. THOMPSON: Well, let me generalize. I think you'll agree with me. It looks like, for the intelligence community, generally speaking there's been an upward trend in terms of counterterrorism money. I think you acknowledged that earlier.

The CIA -- I looked from the last decade -- your appropriation has been at least as much as your request in about every year; '95 was an exception. A lotof years, your appropriation was more than the request if you include supplementals in the later years.

Is it a fact that intelligence appropriations in general have been going downwhile counterterrorism funding has been going up? And, if so, what are we to make of that? Does that mean that we should not have been hamstrung in anyway in terms of our counterterrorism efforts, or are you robbing Peter to pay Paul?

Does that mean that while we're all focused on counterterrorism issues that there are some extremely important things out there not being done that may turn around and bite us in future years? What are these numbers -- what are we to take from these numbers?

MR. TENET: Well, it means all of those things. The other thing that I would take from those numbers is when you look back and reflect on where this all started, we had to do three or four things simultaneously. One, you had to pursue this target and the other targets that you say are important, and indeed are important. You had to fix your infrastructure, you had to grow your workforce, and you had to resuscitate -- in our case, you had to resuscitate your human intelligence capability, because the peace dividend in the '90s basically said, "We're not doing this anymore."

In 1997 we had a strategic plan to resuscitate all aspects of this. And, you know, there's a cost associated to it. Now, there were budget caps.

SEN. THOMPSON: You had to rebuild your clandestine services. You had satellite difficulties that you otherwise wouldn't have.

MR. TENET: Sir, the only point I would make about the supplementals is the reason we got where we needed it is Congress gave us those supplementals. It's an appropriate --

SEN. THOMPSON: But intelligence cannot live on supplementals, can it?

MR. TENET: No, sir. The point is it's either programmatic and it's deep and it's long or basically what happens when you get a supplemental, and then the question is, the next year, when the budget submission doesn't reflect the supplemental or its operational tempo, we're starting all over again from the same place. You knew it and we knew it.

SEN. THOMPSON: Is not conducive to long-range planning.

MR. TENET: No, sir.

SEN. THOMPSON: Moving to your own agencies, you've talked about -- we've talked about the deficiencies. I think one of the greatest concerns that we have in looking forward and trying to decide where we need to make our improvements still has to do with the gaps.

You know, it's interesting that there are some memos -- some public, some not public -- that indicate that you've had -- each of your agencies have had outstanding people doing outstanding work, and we're right on the money and we're pulling things together the way they should and drawing conclusions they should have drawn.

But in some cases it wasn't disseminated properly. In some cases it wasn't handed off to the right people, et cetera, et cetera. We know the story. But it's not like that there are not individuals out there that are incapable of doing this. It seems to be a systematic problem. And I'm wondering where we stand with regard to that.

My concern is this, that basically it's a coordination issue. We've seen instances and we know of other instances that we've not had public where there have been gaps. We've got a system -- we all know we have a system of foreign is over here and domestic is over here and we're supposed to hand things off.

We also know that we have a system whereby the lead agency here, the FBI, that is going to be charged with looking at this threat domestically and doing something about it, has always been a law enforcement agency.

My concern is that we're asking the FBI to change its nature on a dime, as it were, from an after-the-fact investigative body that has been legendary for years and years in this country to a before-the- fact prevention body. And we think perhaps that by making some organizational changes at the top and by having some joint task force and things like that, that that will change the culture.

But the FBI has certain limitations because it's a law enforcement body, essentially. For example, when you're looking at someone, you know, you look at them; if you don't have hard evidence, you can look at them as -- in terms of a preliminary inquiry for how many days -- so many days. Then you have to -- then you have to either open up a full field investigation on them or drop it alltogether.

I'm wondering -- I'm wondering what motivation in an organization that's like this -- what motivation in an organization that rewards cases being made, and people are known and rewarded and recognized for the cases that they've made and cases they work on -- what motivation is it for people around the country inthe various offices to be handing up tidbits of information that doesn't necessarily make any sense to them, they don't know whether or not somebody else needs it. They know maybe they're supposed to coordinate with everyone. But, our investigators are still talking to agents out in the field who -- who don't feel any real sense of re-prioritization out in the field. It's a -- it's a -- it's a culture. It's not necessarily -- I'm convinced that it's not a matter of turf, as such, it's not a matter that people deliberately try to keep things from people, but you have practices such as sources and methods principles, need-to-know principles, things of that nature.

You're trying to change an awful, awful lot, Mr. Mueller, it looks to me like, to cure, you know, your -- your own problems, and then you're going to have totake the extra step, all of you together, to fill in these gaps, when each -- each of you have your own analysts, each of you have your own piece. We don'tknow whether or not it's going to work. We can't -- I can't say it won't. You can't say that it will. But, it looks to me like that there's something to be said for perhaps another entity that is -- that is analysis oriented, that's not -- does not have law enforcement responsibilities or even collection responsibilities but isanalysis oriented, that has the authority to task gaps as they find them. I don't think we have anything like that. I don't know whether that's comparable to MI-5 or any other models.

I know it's difficult as we go along to maybe recognize that the structure that we know perhaps is not the one that needs to take us into this century, but -- and I know that I'm laying an awful lot on the table here with one -- with one question, but I'm asking your -- I'll stop now and ask your thoughts on all of that. Can -- do you -- do you really feel like the things you're doing now are going to cause these -- these -- this long history and these monumental difficulties to change? And can't we do better with a different pattern?

MR. MUELLER: Well, let me -- let me start by addressing the issue of the culture. A lot of people talk about FBI culture of not sharing and the like, and it was best expressed in my mind by Nancy Savage, who testified -- she's head of the agents association -- she testified with appropriations last year, and on the issue, she said "The FBI culture is one of hard work, dedication to the citizens of this country, and excellence in its endeavors," which I think is the best I've heard in terms of FBI describing the FBI culture.

Let me start from distinguishing between collection and the analysis. I would be the first to concede that we have not done a good job in analysis. We have not had either the technology nor the analytical cadre of individuals thatwe have needed to do the analysis in which you're describing. I'm not certain that a separate agency would satisfy that. In fact, I think it would institutionalize that which we are trying to prevent, and that is compartmentalization, because I absolutely believe that the analytical cadre that is looking at the facts ought tohave the tasking ability, ought to have integration with the tactical analysts as well as the agents so that they become familiar with the information that they're getting and digesting, and upon which they are doing the analytical piece.

When you look at an FBI agent and what an FBI agent is good -- an FBI agent is good at doing investigations. And those investigations can be in counter-intelligence -- we've done those for a number of years, where you run acounter-intelligence investigation in trying to determine what attack the Russians or some other country is trying to make on infrastructure --

SEN. THOMPSON: But this is a different deal, isn't it? I mean, we know now that we're dealing with a different kind of enemy that -- that lies there perhaps for years secretly planning, that we have not been able to necessarily infiltrate very much. Isn't that a different situation that we face?

MR. MUELLER: Well, it's a -- you're looking at it from the intelligence -- the intelligence point of view, and how do you -- how do you expand on your knowledge of the persons? You don't arrest them right away because you want to find out who -- who else is in that network, turn them against each other. And that is something that we've been doing for a number of years. But as collectors, I don't think there are -- I think the FBI agents are the finest collectors of intelligence in the world.

Now, one of the things that we have to do, and I think it is changing since September 11th, is for agents who are very good in the criminal sphere to look at a piece of information and not run it through the sifting that you do to determine whether it would be admissible in court. In other words, is it heresay? Well, I'm going to toss that aside. Do I lack a foundation, and therefore I'm going to disregard that? And we are changing to have everyone in the organization understand that a piece of information is a piece of information that has to be put into a matrix and looked at as a whole.

But in terms of the collection, I don't think there are any better around, andto set up another institution to do collection with the United States is fraught with difficulties, in my mind. You then would have another institution that is developing sources in the community, and sources that may provide informationon terrorist matters may be involved in criminal enterprises -- whether it be narcotics, or food stamp fraud, which we have found -- and you would be divorcing those collection pieces from each other, and again, stove-piping it.

The -- the use of technical resources, where you're doing interceptions and the like -- I have heard stories, not good stories, not necessarily horror stories about countries -- other countries that have this dual set-up where the -- there has been the failure to pass on from the intelligence community to the law enforcement community that has resulted in disasters in terms of being able to prevent attacks.

And one other thing that I would mention just for a second, and that it's important in this day and age that we be integrated with our counterparts overseas. And in every country I visited -- Middle East, Southeast Asia -- there is -- our counterpart will be either a primary law enforcement counterpart or an intelligence counterpart, with whom George will -- will have the discussions. But it is important as we proceed and gather the intelligence that we develop these relationships with our counterparts overseas. And we have developed through our Legats and our expanded Legats, those associations that enable us to get intelligence from our law enforcement components. If there is a separate entity in the United States, we will be lacking, and missing, I believe, the benefit of all those contacts that we developed in the law enforcement community around the world to supplement what George has in the intelligence community.

SEN. THOMAS: I take your point, Mr. Mueller. I'm impinging on others' time. I apologize to the chairman and my colleagues with that amount of questions.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Senator Thompson. Congresswoman Harman.

REP. HARMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a long day for the witnesses and for others here who also have questions, so I'm going to try to stick within my -- my time limits.

As I was sitting here, it occurs to me that over a quarter of a century ago, I was chief counsel and staff director of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. At that time, there were very few women in staff positions on subcommittees. I think, if memory serves, there was no woman member of the United States Senate. There was a very able Senate staffer named Fred Thompson who was extremely well-known at the time in the Watergate investigation. But the things that we did were hard, but I don't think any of them as hard as pulling together all the facts that relate to the plot of 9/11. And I just want to say as a matter of personal pride, as I sit here with Senator Feinstein and Congresswoman Pelosi watching Eleanor Hill perform that this moment is a long time in coming and I just commend her for her talent and dedication, and for the amount of work she's been able to pull together for those of us who are part of this joint inquiry in an elegant and -- and reasonably expeditious fashion. I am very proud of thework that you do, Eleanor. (Applause.)

The purpose of this joint inquiry, as I have said many times and many others have said also, is to look backwards for the purpose of looking forward, to bridge the gaps in intelligence capabilities and prevent the next attack. I am not as interested in the failures that happened pre-9/11 as I am interested in protecting, preventing, not having failures at a future time when we may be attacked again -- that future time, according to Director Tenet, and I strongly agree, could be in the next hour, or tomorrow morning, tonight. The sniper incidents in Washington show us how vulnerable we are to attack, and so dothe recent events in Bali, Kuwait, and elsewhere. At any rate, the thrust of myquestions is to go forward.

Let me also add, as Senator Thompson did, that some of what needs to get done does not need to get done by the people at the witness table. It needs to get done by Congress. I think it is tragic that our fiscal year 2003 intelligence authorization bill has not been acted upon. It's held up because of a dispute about the precise powers of an independent commission. Those precise powers should have been agreed on long ago. Everyone supports the commission. And what's being held up in addition to the commission is an information- sharing bill that passed the House, 422-to-2, and has been introduced in the Senate; funding for a wide variety of things, some of which are classified and some ofwhich are public. That bill should be law. The same goes for the homeland security department legislation which we've all been discussing. Director Tenet talks about the back end. That bill is the back end. It's also some part of the front end because it would fuse -- create an intelligence fusion center so that we get better at giving real-time information about the nature of threats to our first responders. If we don't get better about doing that, we're going to continueto be vulnerable. So, I could go on about what we haven't done. Those are two big things that we haven't done.

And yesterday, a bipartisan group from the House that were the original authors of the homeland security legislation held a press conference where we said it's time for the Senate to act, to vote its will on whatever version of civil service the Senate wants to pass, and then for a conference to occur, the White House to buy in, and for us to get a bill signed, and I strongly believe that's true.

But what I want to focus on for a few minutes today are things that are within your power -- you, the witnesses before us -- to fix. And again, I'm not interested in why they were broken. I'm interested in how they get fixed. I think the fair question, and you can't answer it the way I'm going to put it, but you can answer it as I break it into parts, is this one. On 9/11, 19 hijackers boarded four planes at Logan, Dulles and Newark and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Western Pennsylvania. Could those attacks -- would those attacks be prevented today?

Now, of course you can't say yes or no, but what I'm going to ask you is probabilities. I want to know, based on all the things that you are fixing -- and you documented them very carefully -- what is the probability, how much improved is it over where you were on 9/11, that you could stop -- not necessarily those precise attacks, but major attacks targeted at the U.S. homeland? How much better are you at doing this than you were pre-9/11? And I'd like to ask General Hayden as well. General Hayden?

GEN. HAYDEN: Thank you, ma'am. A couple of things have changed, and one thing fundamentally has changed, so let me begin with some of these less impactful changes. One is additional resources, and that's been very important. The committees here have given us additional monies that has been asked for by the president, and some additional manpower. That helps a lot. You heard my reference earlier about transformation and chasing modern signals, that's -- that's good.

We've also, the three of us and some others not at the table, have improved procedures, largely in the area of how quickly and agilely we share information. That's also been very valuable and has an impact.

Now, let me tell you what I think the most impactful thing has been. And much has been made about the DCI's declaration of war against al Qaeda in October of '98 and what did we do about it, and what difference did it make and so on. Let me tell you a fundamental lesson I've learned. There's a big difference between George declaring war and al Qaeda and America declaring war on al Qaeda. The most fundamental difference between today and the circumstances that we existed under on the morning of the 11th -- I used this metaphor before in closed session, let me quickly review it -- prior to September 11th, the motto of your intelligence community was playing American football with the opposition on the two-yard line, and it was forever first and goal. They would run a play, and our measure of merit would be if we stopped them from getting into the end zone on that particular play. And if we did, some metaphorical official would take the ball, put it back on the two-yardline, and declare it to be first and 10 again.

What has changed is that we are delaying, denying, disrupting, and destroying portions of the al Qaeda network. Prior to September 11th, time was infinite for them. It was always on their side. They could take whatever steps they needed to take in order to be secure. They can no longer do that. Things are going bump in their night now, and that puts us at a great advantage. That's the big difference.

REP. HARMAN: Thank you. Time is short, so I just would like just a very short answer from Director Tenet and Director Mueller because I want to turn to something else. Probability -- how much better are we?

MR. TENET: A couple -- you're a lot better at probability. You're a lot better. One, every morning there is a common threat matrix where law enforcement and intelligence data comes together in one place with actions that have been assigned, and everybody sees it and it'd disseminated broadly. Number two, some of the old classification rules have gone out the door. Or (con ?) controls on HUMINT, controls on his raw traffic, controls on his criminal files, because of the Patriot Act, all of that is moving to people quicker than it has before. There is a speed with which this is all happening in terms of the hand-off between the disciplines. There is a greater awareness of what's going on in the country. I can't give you probability. Is it better than it was a year ago? It's a heck of a lot better. And I believe Governor Ridge has done a good job in his role in terms of trying to bring this process together, so yes, we're better. Can I give you a guarantee? Absolutely not.

REP. HARMAN: Right. Thank you. Director Tenet.

MR. MUELLER: The -- at the FBI, there are four things I'd say in areas in which we are substantially better. One, the shift in mission. I think there is an FBI employee, not just agents out there, who understand the necessity of pulling together pieces of information and regardless of how innocuous they may seem, making certain that -- that they are written up and pursued.

Secondly, the joint terrorism task forces in all the 56 offices -- that has greatly expanded our capabilities and not only by having additional agents assigned to counter-terrorism, but by leveraging that with the assistance of the state and locals and providing a mechanism for information to come from state and local as well as information going back to state and locals.

Thirdly, in personnel, we have hired a number of -- over a hundred analysts and what we call IOSs (?) and another 143 IRSs (?). Half of them, approximately, in both categories are still in the background process, but the others are on board and are doing that type of analysis. In terms of agents, we're putting 900 new agents through the academy, and we've reassigned approximately 500 to counter-terrorism.

And lastly, technology -- within the next -- one of the deficiencies we had in exchange of information was not having a top secret SEI (?) network upon which we could shove or push to the analysts those classified documents and cables that we get from others outside as well as within our building. And that -- we have put together a LAN that is going to enable us to do that, and within the next 30 days it will go up, so it will complement the analytical capability we have in the form of analysts by giving them the basis for the sharing of the information within the organization as well as between us and the CIA.

REP. HARMAN: So, the probability is what?

MR. MUELLER: All I can tell you is we have, I think, certainly doubled our capability since last year, if not trebled.

REP. HARMAN: Okay. New question. Senator Levin detailed the plot in his charts and talked about failures, most of which related to watch-listing. My first information about that came from a Newsweek article, June 10, 2002, which carefully documents this material as well. I'm not sure why I learned it from Newsweek first, but at any rate, that's where I learned it. My specific question is watch lists. Director Tenet, in your testimony on page 18, you detail all the changes you've made. What I think we need to know briefly is how will the new -- and you deserve a sandwich -- as one of the mothers on this committee, I think you deserve a sandwich -- (laughter) -- how will the new watch list system work? Will it pick up all the stuff we need it to pick it -- need it to pick up? Will it be one watch list? I assume it will be based on TIPOFF. Will it be run through a national watch list center, or this terrorist identification classification system that Senators Feinstein and Wyden are proposing? Who will run it? Who will ensure that the information gets inputted? Who will have access to it? How will you make certain that the airlines are paying attention to this, or the trains, or, you know pick any number of things?

I think the American people need to know not just that the watch list is being fixed, but precisely how it is going to be fixed, how it is going to be funded, how it won't disappoint us next time. And I don't know whether you can answer that question here, but I think it's very important for the combination of you, specifically the FBI and the CIA, and maybe other agencies, but at least since you're the witnesses, to provide this committee specific information about what is changing and better yet what has already changed so that people who happened to be at strange meetings in Malaysia definitely get watch listed when the first person who notices this notices it.

MR. TENET: And I will do that with some detail for you, Mrs. Harman.

REP. HARMAN: Okay.

MR. MUELLER: Well, I would say that it is being worked on by homeland security. It's yet another reason why a homeland security department would be helpful. And I won't say I think both organizations have changed their procedures with regard to watch lists, consolidating in one. We have in the FBI consolidated one unit, the information that goes into tips or the tip-off system. We have established our own watch list that is tied into NCIC, which is a sub-compartment of NCIC, and the importance is not only having a consolidated watch list but also reviewing that watch list to make certain that persons get off of it when they have been run through the system and come up clean.

So individually I think both of our institutions have changed thei rprocedures to make certain that what happened prior to September 11th does not happen again but it still does not totally satisfy the necessity for having one location within the federal government to address that.

REP. HARMAN: You remind me, Director Tenet, of my favorite rant about e-mail. You push the button and you think people are supposed to know something and act on it and sometimes they don't. The watch list cannot become a "push the button" exercise. It has to be an active, interactive exercise so that consequences flow from listing names.

Last question: There's one member of the Tenet family who knows how to fix things. This is called "Dare to Repair". I trust that -- written by Stephanie Glakas-Tenet, who is the repair person in the Tenet family. But I'm hoping --

MR. TENET: She's fixing the watch list system. (Laughter.)

REP. HARMAN: Well, if you want to get the job done put a woman in charge, so that makes me very happy.

MR. TENET: She's clearly in charge. (Laughter.)

REP. HARMAN: I believe that.

At any rate, this is an introduction to my last question, which is the many people in your agencies who have been trying to fix things, the heroes and heroines pre-9/11 and post-9/11, not the big shots, the little shots, who have been doing extraordinary work, I have said from the beginning again that we had good people with inadequate tools, and I would like each of you to tell us one story about somebody that we won't know who had it right pre-9/11 and continues to do extraordinary work on behalf of the American people, because I think that is the message that doesn't get out enough. General Hayden?

GEN. HAYDEN: I'd point to the folks, ma'am, in our counter- terrorism shop, particularly those who are analyst/linguists, who have been working this problem for decades. The Army had the phrase it takes 18 years to grow a battalion commander and it takes about that long for us to grow someone so knowledgeable about this target that it can take the language and the Koranic references and the indirections and the obscure conversation and turning it into something very useful for American intelligence. That's a life's work. You don't get that off the street. Those are the folks who have looked at this, who looked on the scene on the morning of the 11th I referred to earlier, not that they were responsible but that they had a sense of responsibility, and that's why we had to tell them it's all right, get back to work. I'd single out those folks.

REP. HARMAN: Director Tenet?

MR. TENET: Well, Ms. Harman, I'm going to come back to this woman in the middle of the watch list, who is one of the finest employees that we've ever had employed out there, who starts her day early in the morning, sifts through hundreds of cables, passes operational leads, is as vehemently opposed to these people who are trying to kill us as anybody you've ever met in your life. She's a real hero in this story.

And the notion that I'm going to take her out and shoot her is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, because of her passion and commitment to her job, and I don't want her for a minute to believe that I'm going to come after her or somebody's going to come after her because we overwhelmed her and didn't give her all the tools she needed.

I mean, I'd like you all to meet her sometime.

REP. HARMAN: But you're going to give her better tools now, right?

MR. TENET: Yes, ma'am.

REP. HARMAN: And then she'll be accountable for a job that is a different job from the one she was asked to perform before.

MR. TENET: I want to talk about that accountability is always important, okay, but we also need to be careful. There are people who are taking enormous risks working at an enormous pace, and we've all talked about risk aversion. We've all talked about what people will or will not do, you know, so let's be careful, because none of these people believed that they were doinganything but the best job they knew how to do. There was no intent to withhold information. There was no intent to lie, cheat or steal. They did everything they knew how to do and it wasn't flawless. If anybody's going to take responsibility, I take responsibility.

REP. HARMAN: Well, I appreciate that and that's part of leadership is taking responsibility, but I also think, in line with some of Senator Levin's comments, that we need to give people good job descriptions, good tools and then make certain that not just they try hard, which I am always for, but that they succeed in what I think is the most important endeavor that people are engaged in in the federal government.

Director Mueller?

MR. MUELLER: I would pick an analyst also for the FBI who provided the following description of her day to me. She said, "Imagine for a moment that you had been given a jigsaw puzzle and a plain box. Inside are thousands of pieces, varying slightly in shape and color but none give any indication of the picture that is to be formed from them. You have no picture on the box and donot know what the puzzle is supposed to look like. You are aware that the majority of the pieces don't even belong to this puzzle, but you are cautious in discarding pieces, which could belong. The ones that do belong are not enough to complete the puzzle or even give more than a hint of the picture that they are meant to form.

"Now, imagine that this is not a game but a matter of life and death where every threat could be real, every speculation could have merit, every source report could stop an attack, in your 12, 14, 16- hour workday try to determine which pieces belong the puzzle and where they fit. And what does the picturelook like, who are the players, what are the patterns, what are we missing and how do we find it?

"Now, try doing this with insufficient personnel and technology," which comes to your point is we have to give them the personnel and the technology. "You're overwhelmed with information, overburdened by case loads, stymied by technology and constrained by laws and policies. And you try to supplant resources with longer hours, missing more time with family and friends, celebrating yet another holiday season a day or week late or not at all.

"All of this is done knowing that despite your commitment and your determination, the pieces simply may not be there for you to put together. It is done knowing that lives could be lost in one day and you watch in horror as your worst nightmare is recognized."

REP. HARMAN: Mr. Chairman, I thank the hardworking employees of these agencies and I wish them well and tell them that they have the security of America on their shoulders and I wish even better wisdom for the people who have appeared before us today and thank them for their testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you very much, Congresswoman Harman.

And this completes the designated questioners. The order for five-minute questions will be Graham, Goss, Shelby, Pelosi, DeWine, Hoekstra, Peterson, Bereuter, Roemer, Lugar, Reyes, Wyden, Boswell, Gibbons, Feinstein, Hatch, Bayh, Roberts, Kyl, Condit.

On October 7, over Mr. Tenet's signature, the CIA issued a declassification of certain information that had been previously contained in a national intelligence estimate. I'm going to read two paragraphs from that declassification.

"Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions. Such terrorism might involve conventional means as with Iraq's unsuccessful attempt at a terrorist offensive in 1991 or chemical and biological weapons.

"Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamic terrorists in conducing a weapons of mass destruction attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number ofvictims with him."

From what I read and speculate, there is a prospect that we might be underway with a U.S.-led attack, which Saddam Hussein could no longer deter within the next hundred days. In that time frame, I want to talk about where weare defensively and offensively in protecting the people of the United States, especially here in our homeland. First, on the defense, Director Mueller, what would you describe as our state of preparedness to deal with the imbedded international terrorists who are within the United States, similar to the 19 who hijacked the airplanes on September the 11th? And how would you describe the acceleration of pace of attempting to identify the location, the scale, the skills, the nature of support and command and control for those terrorists whoare living among us?

MR. MUELLER: I don't have the figures in front of me, but I can tell you that since September 11th the number of investigations that we have undertaken has doubled, if not tripled. The number of interceptions we sought approval from the court for has at least quadrupled, if not more. The reallocation of or the reassignment of 500 agents to counterterrorism has substantially assisted in our ability to enhance our coverage of individuals in the country who would do us harm. I will tell you also that with the issue of Iraq there, we have -- and without open hearing giving too much detail -- focused on that possibility, and are increasing our resources addressed to that particular -- addressed to those individuals who might be in our country, who might find this as an occasion to commit some sort of an act, were we to initiate some operation with regard to Iraq.

SEN. GRAHAM: So, what -- if you could summarize, what do you think should be the level of assurance that the people of the United States would have that we would be successful in defending them against this probability that Saddam Hussein would be much less constrained in adopting terrorist activities?

MR. MUELLER: Well, I think we are doing -- we are looking at every lead. We are looking at every possibility that comes to our attention of a terrorist -- not just a terrorist that may be associated one way directly or indirectly with Iraq, but others who might use this as an occasion to exploit the opportunity to undertake an attack.

I have a hard time -- I have a hard time telling the country that you should be comfortable that we covered all the bases in the wake of what we saw they were able to accomplish on September 11th. I mean, that was a watershed in terms of the accomplishment -- of a group of individuals to come together, utilize modern means of technology in terms of their communication, their planning, their organization, their travels -- a type of discipline that prior to that time I don't think we had seen. So I am uncomfortable sitting here saying, look, we are taking every step. But based on the fact that we are taking every step, you the American public should not be aware that there is a substantial risk out there that they could undertake. And by "they" I mean not just those associated with Iraq, but those associated with al Qaeda or Hezbollah or somebody else. But I will be uncomfortable in saying that you should relax and say that the FBI has taken care -- or the CIA has taken care of that issue.

SEN. GRAHAM: My next round I would like to go to the offense and ask some questions of General Hayden and Director Tenet as to what we are doing over here against these terrorist groups. Congressman Goss.

REP. GOSS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director Tenet, how long have you been the DCI?

MR. TENET: Five years and a few months, sir.

REP. GOSS: That gives you longevity on the panel then of time held in the job -- is that correct?

MR. TENET: I believe so, yes, sir.

REP. GOSS: How many DCIs were there immediately preceding you in the period of the '90s?

MR. TENET: I believe it was four in a period of seven years.

REP. GOSS: Four in a period of seven years. So we have five DCIs and you have had 50 percent of it during the decade of the '90s -- is that about right?

MR. TENET: Actually four in the '90s -- four DCIs in the '90s.

REP. GOSS: Four. A lot of change going on. Some of those previous DCIs said that they didn't have much access to the White House. I think some recall a joke about -- now a bad joke -- but a joke at the time about a small plane that crashed near the White House, as the director of the DCI trying to get in to see the president. Do you remember that story going around? My question goes to this: You asked a -- you made a comment about the seriousness of the war. You certainly made it clear to the oversight committees. I don't think there's any mystery in the oversight committees, those of us who were also here during the longevity of your tenure, about this problem. There's really not a whole lot new that has come out of this for those of us who have been focused on it.

My question that has haunted me -- and I imagine has haunted you -- is how come nobody listened in '98 at the right level? Why didn't we get out of OMB -- why did we not get out of the people who were making the decisions an awareness that we needed to reinvest, that we were dangerously underinvested, that we were letting capability slide, that our technology was falling behind? It was clear. I would love to have your answer, and I would be very happy to have Director Mueller's and General Hayden's as well, but I am not sure Director Mueller had been there long enough.

MR. TENET: I can't speak to that the reaction was to our requests. I think you really have to talk to people who are making judgments on what we were asking for. I think that this is an endeavor where if you don't make the investments, you know, you can't function at the level you need to function at. I think we made that case as compellingly as we possibly could. And I believe that, you know, whether there was a deficit that was at stake, whether there were budget caps that were at stake -- whatever the reasoning was, whatever, we just needed more support than we received.

REP. GOSS: What's the primary function of the federal government? It is national security, isn't it? Guarantee the safety and well-being, liberty of the people of the United States of America? Okay? Shouldn't that be job one, and shouldn't the leaders be listening?

Okay, my second question then. General Hayden, you said something about bin Laden coming across the bridge -- hypothetical of course -- but I take that to mean that if bin Laden did come there would be capabilities that we have that we can use elsewhere in the world that we cannot use in the United States of America -- is that correct?

GEN. HAYDEN: Not so much capabilities, but how agilely we can apply those capabilities. The person inside the United States becomes a U.S. person under the definition provided by the FISA act --

REP. GOSS: Special protections, according to your testimony.

GEN. HAYDEN: Special protections then apply. There are procedural steps that one can identify such a person as the agent of a foreign power. But one has got to go through those procedural steps. Now, take that metaphor and apply it to somebody without the persona of Osama bin Laden, and you can see the challenge of trying to cover people inside U.S. borders, even if they will us harm.

REP. GOSS: Well, let's -- again, I don't want to get into details -- I am aware of the public nature of this meeting. But let's just suppose this sniper is somebody we wanted to catch very badly. Could we apply all our technologies and all our capabilities and all our know-how against that person, or would that person be considered to have protection as an American citizen?

GEN. HAYDEN: That person would have protections as what the law defines as a U.S. person, and I would have no authorities to pursue him.

REP. GOSS: So the answer is that person have some protections just by being in the United States of America, and if that act were actually taking place overseas we would be able to bring more to bear to deal with it?

GEN. HAYDEN: Absolutely.

REP. GOSS: That's a fair statement?

GEN. HAYDEN: Yes, sir.

REP. GOSS: I am not sure everybody in this country understands just how many safeguards we have for American liberties. And I think it's very important to underscore that. There is a price for it, and we are trying to find the balance and what that price is. I appreciate your answer to the question.

Finally, Director Tenet, you didn't seem satisfied with the amount of time you had to answer a question -- some dispute about a matter in New York. Would you care to use the time to elaborate?

MR. TENET: Not at this moment, sir. I think that there is -- we have a different view of what happened there, but let's work through that.

REP. GOSS: For your comfort zone, let me tell you that I think that we do understand that there are two stories, and when you put it all together it does make some sense to what different people who are doing their job responsibly thought, and I don't find an inconsistency in it.

The last question, which I will not ask -- my time is expired. Thank you.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, congressman. Senator Shelby.

SEN. SHELBY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director Tenet, I am going to refer you to I believe it's 25 of your written statement that has been made part of the record today. And I want to quote -- I believe it's paragraph three -- from it, page 25, paragraph three. I believe it's the second sentence. But "When we realized surging wasn't sufficient, we began a sustained drumbeat, both within the administration and here on the Hill, that we had to have more money and more people and money devoted to this fight." Did the drumbeat begin in '98 or before?

MR. TENET: I have to go back and look at my records, sir, but I believe it did, at least internally in terms of what we were requesting. But I'll check that for you.

SEN. SHELBY: I want to go back to part of -- this is not classified, but this was in the appropriations hearing in '98, and the question to you, directed to you and Director Freeh at that time was about funding. And I'll leave out Director Freeh at the moment -- he's talking about counterterrorism support. And then I will ask you -- and I believe it was Senator Arlen Specter, former chairman of this committee, was asking the question, and he was talking about resources. And quoting you, you said, "Senator" -- responding to Senator Specter -- "I would like to respond and just say I think we are already at war. We have been on a war footing for a number of years now. I do not think it's aquestion of money in our case. I think it's a question of focus, operational tempo, the aggressiveness with which we pursue this target. I do not have any doubt about the level of that effort today, and I would challenge your premise about the lack of human intelligence against the terrorist target. I think it's something we should talk about behind closed doors, because I think that effort is better than it has ever been -- and growing. I think there are successes to prove it in some of the facts we have laid down in open session."

My point is you were saying, as we understood it in the context-- and I was in that appropriation hearing, being an appropriator, that it was more than just money -- it was a question of focus, operational tempo, the aggressiveness with which we pursue these targets -- these are your words.

MR. TENET: Right, I believe we had all those things.

SEN. SHELBY: Do you disagree with that, your statement in 1998 before the Appropriations Committee?

MR. TENET: Was that after the Africa bombing, sir? Do you know when it was?

SEN. SHELBY: It must have been after --

MR. TENET: I'd also say that in roughly the same period -- you can go look at it for your record -- Senator Kyl asked me a question in closed session about how much money we more needed for the community each year every year, and I said between 900 and a billion dollars, in closed session for the years that followed -- and I think that was in 1998 too.

SEN. SHELBY: And, Director Mueller, you were not there on this occasion -- you were not the director -- but I'll read this in the record. And this same question was asked -- basic question by Senator Specter on the appropriations panel to Director Freeh -- and Director Freeh, and I'll quote him from the record, responded as follows: "Senator" -- speaking to Senator Specter's question -- "first of all, I appreciate all your remarks and your support, particularly in the counterterrorism area, which goes back many, many years. We have grown in three years from a $93 million budget to a $243 million budget in counterterrorism. You and your colleagues were generous enough last year to give the FBI I believe it's 1,264 new positions. We are hiring these people. We are training them. We are putting together both the human resources and the infrastructure to support the counterterrorism effort. We are in two or three times better condition in '97 than we were in '93 to undertake our counterterrorism mission, a mission which you point out is a huge and growing one. We are in Saudi Arabia. We are taking fugitives back from Pakistan. We are in many, many places where we have not been, which is why we need our Legats. We are doing everything we can right now to absorb this vast increase in resources" -- this is at the Bureau, your predecessor. "I would rather absorb that growth before we start another huge influx of resources."

I don't know, Director Mueller -- and I am going to say again you were not there, you were not the director, but you ought to familiarize yourself with this. I will furnish you a copy of it.

MR. MUELLER: Thank you, senator.

SEN. SHELBY: My time is up. I'll wait another round.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, senator. Congresswoman Pelosi.

REP. PELOSI: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Again to our distinguished witnesses, thank you for your testimony today, for your service to our country. I associate myself with the remarks of Congresswoman Harman in commending the people, the brave young men and women and not-so-young men and women who work with all of you every day to protect our country. We are grateful for their courage and their patriotism.

I just want to throw out to the three of you some observations that I have for your comment. When we first went into this inquiry, and when we first, in the aftermath of 9/11, it appeared that the hijackers were people who came to the United States, lived in isolation, as the director has described, or not conspicuous -- didn't break any laws, et cetera -- and that a certain moment a button was pushed, a message went out, and then went into operation. In the course of the hearings and our reading and the rest, it appears that maybe they weren't living lives of such isolation, and that they might have received comfort and support, witting or unwitting, from some people in our country, A. B, from -- especially from Director Tenet's testimony this morning, I would observe that when we asked the question, Could this have been avoided? -- I am becoming more discouraged about that as I hear more testimony, because it appears that if this wave of hijackers for some reason or another would have been apprehended there may have been another tier to replace them -- I don't necessarily mean a whole tier -- just people to fill in different slots. And so this was so well orchestrated that -- and I don't want this to sound hopeless, but that they had people to fill in if somebody got more than a parking ticket or we knew of the people who met in Southeast Asia -- we knew of that meeting, and then we identified, and somebody was on the watch list -- that that might have been a window on their activity that might have broken this, but it may not necessarily have prevented somebody from being in the wrong place at the wrong time in terms of the security of the American people.

I would just throw those observations out. Were there more here than meets the eye in terms of the support system for these hijacker? And I would just add a third observation, and that is I have always thought that the apprehension of Moussaoui and the timing of 9/11 may not have been the natural course of events -- that Moussaoui's arrest may have triggered the hijackers into going into action. Now, when I have asked this question in the past in hearings, people say, Oh, this hijacking was planned years in advance. It may well have been, but that still doesn't mean that the timing may not have been accelerated, when the window on their activity was opened by the apprehension by Moussaoui. I put that out there for your comments.

MR. MUELLER: Well, I'll address the support within the United States. I think one critical distinction that you identified is witting versus unwitting. I do believe -- and we have seen a number of instances -- they were provided identification -- some sort of support by persons they come in contact with the United States, but these are unwitting individuals. Some of them have been arrested and prosecuted for that support -- for instance, providing identification to one or more of the hijackers. So, yes, I think there were unwitting supporters within the United States, and that's an important distinction to recognize.

As to whether or not -- as to the issue of are there others out there who would have filled the holes, had there been holes? I think the answer to that has to be yes. I mean, we all know that in the camps in Afghanistan approximately 10,000 individuals went through the training and are now dispersed throughout the world. We also had at least two individuals who attempted to get in the United States who we know to have been individuals who were knowledgeable and we believe part of the plot who were part of the cell in Hamburg, Germany, who tried to get in but their visas were denied, and they accordingly could not be amongst the hijackers on September 11th. So, yes, there were many others out there that I believe -- and I think George would have his own views -- who would have been able to fill those slots should the need have arisen.

As to the last point you make in terms of whether or not the arrest of Moussaoui might have triggered the date or determined the date, I will leave that up to George. One of the problems we have is I can't get too much into the events surrounding Mr. Moussaoui because he is facing trial in Virginia this summer.

REP. PELOSI: Thank you, Mr. Director. Mr. Director?

MR. TENET: Ms. Pelosi, I think with regard to your first points, the director -- Ben al-Sheibh tried to get into the United States, visa denied, somebody else came in. Hamzi and Midhar took flight training, didn't do well at it. Hani Hanjour came in and became a pilot. On we go.

With regard to Moussaoui -- assuming I'm allowed to talk to Moussaoui -- the one thing that I note is that nine days after he's arrested everybody starts buying their tickets. So, yes, these are well planned -- or 11 days -- yes, these are well planned events, but they are determined by the operational security of the environment at the time.

Now, why it happened that they started buying their tickets so soon after his arrest, I don't fully understand, but you have to pay attention to it. So they react, and they're resilient, and they make decisions based on their own sense of operational security.

REP. PELOSI: Thank you, Mr. Director. General, did you have any observation you would like to make?

GEN. HAYDEN: No, ma'am. It's very hard for us to comment. The core of the question is so much domestic that we have very little to add.

REP. PELOSI: Thank you, general. I just want to make one observation, Mr. Chairman, because I know my time is up. I direct all of us to page 20 of Director Tenet's testimony. And on that page you are quoting the National Intelligence Estimate of 1995, and in it you say, "Our review of the evidence obtained thus far about the plot uncovered in Manila in early '95 suggests that the conspirators were guided in their selection of method and venue of attack by carefully studying security procedures in place in the region. If terrorists operating in this country are similarly methodical, they will identify serious vulnerabilities in the security system for domestic flights." I point that out, because I think that in looking into the causes of 9/11 and assessing the performance of agencies with the responsibility to protect the American people from terrorist attacks we focused very much on our intelligence community. ButI do think that a statement of that kind points to broader areas of responsibility and there's other statements in all of your testimony that speak to where weare -- where we have exposure they will exploit it.

Again, on an earlier page in the testimony: "A sign that our warnings were being heard, both from our analysts and from our raw intelligence we disseminated was that the FAA issued two alerts to air carriers in the summer of 2001." I think that we will have an excellent product in our report of this committee. I think once again it points to the need of an independent commission to review a broader range of agencies with the responsibility, because you can have the best intelligence gathering. You can all share the information. General, you can do whatever it is you do that you can't talk about, and you don't do it in this country. But the fact is there is a great deal elsewhere we have exposure, and it seems that part of their modus operandi is to exploit the vulnerabilities, the security weaknesses that they may see. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I once again thank the gentlemen for their distinguished service and yield back the balance of my time.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Congresswoman Pelosi. The next is going to be Senator DeWine. And after Senator DeWine asks his questions I am going to call for a five-minute recess. Senator DeWine?

SEN. DEWINE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Hayden, I felt the discussion that you had with Congressman Goss in regard to your powers or lack of powers with regard to the sniper was very instructive and it is, as you point out in your testimony, the type of discussion that we should be having. You say in your testimony -- and I'll quote: "I am not really helped by being reminded that I need more Arabic linguists, or by someone second-guessing an obscure intercept sitting in our files that may make more sense today than it did two years ago. What I really need you to do is to talk to your constituents and find out where the American people want that line between security and liberty to be."

I don't disagree with that statement, but I think I would take it a little further. I think that we as a Congress, specifically this committee, these committees, have an obligation to do that. But I also think you have an obligation to do that. We write the laws. You or your lawyers then interpret them, and you issue very long regulations, and I won't bore anybody by reading some of these regulations, but they are long, and they are extensive. And then you take that down, and you take those lawyer-created regulations or rules and you take them down, the manuals down to the people in the field who have to actually make these decisions every single day. And so I think you have an obligation, candidly, to come back to us and to say, Senator, do you really want to do this? Do you understand what we are not doing? Do you understand who we can't target? Do you understand what information we can't get? And I think that you have an obligation to do that as often as you can.

Now, I will say that your comment that you made -- public testimony -- about bin Laden crossing the border between Canada and the United States -- you did that. And I think you are right: you apparently didn't hear much complaint from Congress. So I would certainly give you that. But I would just say that I think we all have an obligation to do that. As I have discussed with you, and as I have discussed with some of your team, I am not sure you are totally interpreting the law correctly. But that's something that we should be going back and forth on in being discussed and discuss. And so I would just make that comment.

Mr. Mueller, let me just -- you made a comment in regard to continuing resolutions, and the problem connected with that. You say a long term -- my emphasis -- but I think it's what you meant -- a long-term continuing resolution could have a significant impact on our analytical program. And let me ask all three of you if you could comment about the consequences of long-term continuing resolutions, particularly this year, but any time that you might get one, what it might entail. And we will assume that means basically flat funding.

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure, I'll go first, Senator.

SEN. DEWINE: Because I think that's something we need to know and we need to get out.

GEN. HAYDEN: Well, fundamentally, with the continuing resolution we are prohibited from having new starts. And I have tried to emphasize in my testimony this is all about newness, this is all about transformation, this is all about chasing a global telecommunications revolution. To put us through some portion of the next fiscal year without any new starts, without any ability to pivot left or right, but just to continue straight ahead, that penalizes us.

SEN. DEWINE: Thank you. Mr. Director?

MR. TENET: I agree with Director Hayden.

MR. MUELLER: And also the delay in bringing on additional analysts, as I pointed out, additional agents. And for us also support personnel. Those delays mean that much longer before we get those individuals on board that we need to get the job done.

SEN. DEWINE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Senator DeWine. At this point we'll take a five minute break, and Congressman Hoekstra will be the first questioner when were convene.

(Recess.)

SEN. GRAHAM: Gentlemen, I want to thank you very much. I know this has been a long day for you, and also the preparation that went into today. So I thank you for your candid and very informative responses.

Congressman Hoekstra.

REP. PETER HOEKSTRA (R-MI): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for the panelists for being here for a very informative hearing. I think, you know, from Eleanor Hill's opening statement -- at the end of that opening statement, there were a lot of questions that were raised that I hope this committee considers and we take a serious look at.

I want to focus on the comprehensive strategic plan. There's some question as to whether one of those existed prior to September 11th. A Department of Justice inspector general report recently said the FBI has never performed a comprehensive written assessment of the risks of the terrorist threat facing the United States. A national intelligence estimate of the al Qaeda threat overseas was not done prior to September 11th.

The question that I have is, is there now a comprehensive strategy document or plan in place that each of the three of you have had input into that you would agree on, that this is a strategic plan, "These are the roles that each of our organizations and agencies plays"? What are its fundamental components?

And then, as you're talking about the fundamental components, there's been a lot of discussion about, you know, people who can get into the country and people who cannot; the integrity of our visa system and our border controls. Does the strategic plan address the issue of the porousness of our borders, our Canadian border and our border with Mexico, as it relates to illegal aliens and the significant number of people that cross our borders illegally without ever being detected?

Where do you want to start?

MR. MUELLER: I can go ahead and start on the -- we in the FBI have, in draft form, a comprehensive plan for looking at the threats within the United States of various terrorist groups. It is in draft form. It is nearing completion. It does not address the certain areas that a -- that I know have been addressed by others, particularly Tom Ridge and his shop, and that is the borders and the weakness in the borders.

But ours is focused on the threat of terrorism and terrorist groups within the United States. We have to date, particularly since September 11th, done analyses of various portions of the United States where we think the threat is perhaps higher than elsewhere. But as I said, we have it in final draft form and it will be completed within the next several weeks, that plan to which the OIG report adverts.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Dr. Tenet?

MR. TENET: Congressman, I think, from the perspective of the foreign intelligence community, Mike Hayden and I and the components of our community are still very much on that plan, very expanded that we laid down in 1998. Obviously we now have expanded the relationship overseas with Mike and our folks and other people.

But we've now seen an explosion in operational tempo. You now see a far broader reach. And some things I can't say in the open, but in essence the strategy and the targeting that underlay the strategy in '98 is still now extant. There's a difference. Afghanistan has changed in a fundamental way. There are still issues we're working through there.

But when you look at the speed and pace with which we're working together, there's a common understanding of the target. There's a common understanding of the collection and targeting that we engage in every day. It's very fast-paced and iterative. And so that's how we're attacking this problem.

Now, they're intimately involved as well, because they also bring data to the table that allows us to work overseas and it also allows them to work here. So there's an integration between the foreign and the law enforcement community against the al Qaeda target overseas, and here, I might add, that I think is quite vibrant.

REP. HOEKSTRA: The question that I have, though, is, you know, this morning we spent considerable time about, you know, talking about holding some folks accountable for not watch-listing individuals so that they would have been caught at the borders or coming in.

I've got to believe that each of your organizations is concerned that the way that you have described al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations is they will gauge us, they will push and they will find our weak spots. And if they find out that, hey, we've got this watch- listing down, we identify somebody, they're on the watch list, they get to our port of entry, we find them right away, it's not going to take them very long to say, "You know, let's just get into Canada or Mexico and we'll walk across."

Now, I got -- where does that comprehensive plan come into place that says, "Okay, the FBI has got their piece together, CIA has got their piece, NSA has got their piece; you guys have your three pieces done, but nobody's taken a look at this border component"?

MR. TENET: Homeland security, and Governor Ridge is looking at theborder north and south, and it is integrated there, sir. So come to that table, integrate all of that.

REP. HOEKSTRA: So your plans are being integrated into their plans and you're providing written documentation, so sometime in the future we can have perhaps a closed hearing where you can present your strategic plans on terrorism in more detail?

MR. TENET: Yes, sir.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you --

REP. HOEKSTRA: Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Congressman Hoekstra. Congressman Peterson.

REP. COLLIN PETERSON (D-MN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony and for what you and your folks do for the country. We appreciate it.

Director Mueller, I want to talk to you about the Moussaoui situation. Idon't know how much you can talk about this, but there's been a kind of ongoing concern in Minnesota about the facts of what happened there. That's been an issue. You may or may not be aware of that.

In Ms. Hill's statement for today, there's a section on page 21 where it's talking about that the Minneapolis agent in charge, who I think was acting -- I don't think there was, at that time, whatever the title is of the person that's in charge of the office --

MR. MUELLER: Special agent in charge.

REP. PETERSON: Yeah -- that he was, according to this statement here, trying to get the people at FBI headquarters spun up, because he was trying to make sure that Moussaoui did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center. And then further on it says that the person at headquarters doesn't remember that conversation.

When we had the gentleman here that was in Minneapolis, one of the people the other day, I asked some questions about this and there were some responses that were then later changed. What I'm interested in, if it's possible to get on the public record exactly what happened between Minneapolis and the radical fundamentalist unit or headquarters or whatever it was -- are you familiar with the -- have you looked into that and are familiar with what happened between the acting agent in charge in Minneapolis and your folks at -- (inaudible)?

MR. MUELLER: I think one of the -- I am generally familiar with the facts, yes; not the day-to-day conversations, but I think the breakdown came in that there was a desire to get a court order allowing the agents to look at the laptop and other provisions.

There was a disagreement as to whether or not there was sufficient evidence that would link Moussaoui, the individual, to a foreign power, which is a terrorist group. It doesn't have to be a country, so to speak, a recognized country. And there were some disagreements based on a faulty interpretation of the law at the lower levels -- that's my understanding -- and that --

REP. PETERSON: Was that in Minneapolis or --

MR. MUELLER: Pardon?

REP. PETERSON: Was that in Minneapolis?

MR. MUELLER: No, at headquarters.

REP. PETERSON: At headquarters.

MR. MUELLER: And the discussion with the agent in the Minneapolis office. And it did not get elevated to where it perhaps should have been, either in Minneapolis or --

REP. PETERSON: I'm not so much concerned about that whole issue, because I think we've been through that. But it's my understanding that the agent in charge in Minneapolis actually went above -- maybe one or two levels above the place that he originally called to try to get somebody to listen, because they were convinced that there was something going on here and they were very agitated that they couldn't get anybody in headquarters --

MR. MUELLER: First of all --

REP. PETERSON: Do you know if the agent in Minneapolis called other people beyond the first person that they called where they got into this whole issue about whether they had -- as I understand it, there were calls made to people above that, I don't think at your level, but, you know, people at pretty high levels by this agent to try to get this --

MR. MUELLER: I am not aware of that. Hold on just one second. (Confers with staff.) After 9/11 there were. After 9/11, but not before 9/11, apparently.

REP. PETERSON: Well, it's my understanding that there were calls made prior to 9/11 to people above. And we keep getting conflicting information about that.

MR. MUELLER: Well, I will have to get back to you on that.

REP. PETERSON: Would it be possible -- and I don't know what the legalities are with the trial and everything -- could you get me the chronology of actually what the contacts were between Minneapolis and who was talked to --

MR. MUELLER: Sure.

REP. PETERSON: -- so we can lay this to rest? Because there's been some press accounts and there's been some concern in the Minneapolis office about what the agent there did and didn't do and whether they did enough and so forth.

MR. MUELLER: Well, I -- a couple of things. I think everybody was concerned about Moussaoui. That's why he was arrested. They were very much concerned about what he might do, which is why the agent made the decision, when this came to him, to take Moussaoui off the streets --

REP. PETERSON: Right.

MR. MUELLER: -- on the immigration. And so he was incarcerated during that period of time and was therefore deterred and detained. I was out in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago and talked to the office and praised them with the agents there and the support of the analysts for the work that they had done in pursuing Moussaoui, because I think they did a terrific job.

The issue on the disagreements on whether or not you had sufficient information to go forward on a FISA at a particular time did not go as far in the organization as it perhaps should. We have changed that since September 11th. So if the same situation happened today and there was a disagreementas to whether or not you had sufficient to go forward on a FISA, it would come all the way up to me ultimately if it could not be resolved at a lower level.

But I do believe the agents in Minneapolis did an excellent job from day one pursuing it. There were miscommunications back at headquarters that were unfortunate. But that's been resolved.

REP. PETERSON: Well, if you could get somebody to get me how that went, I would appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Peterson. Congressman Bereuter.

REP. DOUG BEREUTER (R-NE): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony and for your responses to questions and your public service. In the short time I have available here, I'd like to focus on the future on the basis of the information we know about what has happened.

Director Mueller, I'll start with you just as a follow-up to Congressman Peterson's question, because you made reference to a misinterpretation of a statute by the FBI attorneys related to foreign powers. That was unfortunate. It was probably not crucial because of a link that otherwise had not been established.

But in any case, my question to you is whether or not the lawyers and agents across the country now understand the full definition of what is a foreign power so that a FISA determination looks more possible under the two elements in the definition of a foreign power.

MR. MUELLER: Yes, we've had training sessions. We also have sent out what we call electronic communications to clarify those issues. I will also say the Patriot Act is exceptionally helpful in enabling us to utilize that tool in ways we have not done in the past.

We also -- there is -- those of us who have done this work in the past know that when you get a criminal warrant, you generally go to the assistant United States attorney in the various district and then go right to the judge there. So you have the assistant United States attorney and the lawyers working with the agents.

Part of the problem with the FISA process is there's a FISA court and it sits here in Washington DC. And consequently, in putting together the package for the FISA court, you have to get the information from the field and meld that information with the knowledge of the court and the procedures of the court back at headquarters and then get the package up to this court.

And what we are trying to do is expedite that process by taking out some of the middle people that may not fully understand all of the aspects of the FISA court to make the process go swifter and to assure that we eliminate, to the extent possible, any room for misinterpretation of what is required under the statute.

REP. BEREUTER: I think those are very important changes and I'm glad to hear of them.

Director Tenet, do you favor the Homeland Security Department, which we hope will be established, sharing in the tasking of foreign intelligence collections on threats facing the homeland?

MR. TENET: Well, I think, as a customer, we naturally will take analytical tasking and whatever help the Homeland Security Department needs. We will treat them the way we treat all of our senior customers. So once we get into this back-and-forth, they'll be the recipients of our product. In the morning they'll be able to come back to us and say, you know, "Can you help us with this and this? Can you do a piece of work on this and how it might apply in the homeland?" We will naturally do that with them.

REP. BEREUTER: I think that's a good accommodation, but it does seem to me that there are cases where the requirements of homeland security, and certainly the priorities on it, might be different than they are for the Central Intelligence Agency or the Department of Defense or the FBI. And I would hope that maybe the Senate will do what the House failed to do and give them a seat at the tasking table when it comes to foreign -- I emphasize foreign -- intelligence collection. And, in fact, I offered that to our Rules Committee to make an order.

I'd like to turn to you, General Hayden. And I recognize what you had to say on pages 9 through 10 of your testimony, which relates to your predecessor, for example, in the '70s and the message he got here from that Congress at that time. But we've learned that NSA, apparently for policy reasons, decided not to target international communications of individual foreignpersons in the USA intentionally, even though it would have been possible, it appears, to obtain approval under FISA for such collections.

Why did the NSA adopt that policy, General?

GEN. HAYDEN: Well, we do get FISAs, but you're right; there are several classes -- I'll use the word targets -- in which we would pursue a FISA, and there are others in which we would turn that over to the FBI.

A couple of reasons. One is, as you've alluded to before, the history of the agency suggests it needs to exercise great care in what it does within the United States of America. Beyond that, though, no matter who would get the warranty collection -- in this case, NSA or FBI -- you would create a seam between two organizations.

If we were to get the FISA, the warranty collection for a protected person inside the United States, we would close the seam between our information gained from SIGINT internally and the information we would get externally through our normal processes. That seam would be very tight. But the seam would be quite wide between the SIGINT information being gained about that individual and the other information that would be gained by the FBI through all their other tools.

You've got to make a call. And I think, in general, the call is accept the seam between what I'll call domestically-driven SIGINT and SIGINT derived from overseas so as to put all the information you're getting about this person inside the United States into one basket under an FBI rubric so that all the tools being used to gain information about this target --

REP. BEREUTER: Including your assets?

GEN. HAYDEN: -- and then, when asked by the FBI -- and this is commonplace -- the FBI would ask us for technical support, but the action would be carried out under their authority.

REP. BEREUTER: Thank you. My time has expired, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Congressman Bereuter. Congressman Roemer.

REP. TIM ROEMER (D-IN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say that I really respect the difficult job that the three of you have in front of you. We have in our past, 50 or 60 years ago, had an enemy that was trying to take overall of Europe, and we knew how to go after that enemy. We had an enemy in Vietnam that used guerrilla tactics and we had difficulties there.

And now we have an enemy that tries to train on our own soil, tries to infiltrate our own schools, and tries to kill hundreds if not thousands of Americans. And we count on you three to help protect the security of this country.

Now, while there are people maybe on this committee that think that the three of you may be to blame for many things, lots of things, everything, and there may be some people on this committee who think that you performed flawlessly before 9/11, I come down on the side of I believe mistakes were made.

I believe there were failures. I believe that there were inadequate communications between agencies so we didn't have enough linguists and analysts, that we didn't have a good enough watch-list system, that we could have had newer technologies in different parts of our country in our field offices.

But I am for moving forward and trying to make sure, in light of what happened in Kuwait, what happened in Yemen, what happened in Bali, what happened in the Philippines today, killing six people, injuring 144 people, that it doesn't happen in this country again and that we move forward and try to correct those mistakes. And I think the three of you are the three people to help lead us there and get us there. I have confidence in the three of you.

I also think that this joint inquiry has done a magnificent job, Mr. Chairman. I'm proud to serve on it with the ranking members. And we have worked to uncover facts, to try to make recommendations, to solve some of the problems and fix some of the mistakes, while not just saying this is a witch hunt and a blame game.

Now we have, in a bipartisan way, come forward and said we need a joint commission. You folks are busy. You don't have a lot of time to look back. But we do need to correct the mistakes. We're about ready to go out of business with this Congress ending. We've got thousands of pages of documents that we still have to go through.

We have some major institutional recommendations that we might need. We need an independent commission to finish the work. And we have agreed to do that in the House and the Senate, in conference, and the White House keeps moving the goal posts on us. We solved one problem and they changed the goal posts and said, "Well, here's another one."

I would hope the White House would come forward and work with us. They've negotiated with us, but genuinely work with us to create this independent commission and help us, help you three, help the very good people that work for you, that dedicate their service and their lives to protecting Americans, to getting this right in the future.

I have just three basic questions, one for each one of you. General Hayden, you said in your testimony that you don't need to be reminded about linguists. I think you do, with all due respect. In your 2002 Fiscal Year request, you asked for significantly less civilian analysts and linguists. I know you are a level-three expert. You speak Bulgarian. We vitally need these linguists doing their jobs and these analysts doing their jobs -- strategic analysts and tactical analysts. I would like to know why just in the latest '02 budget you haven't requested more than the previous year.

Let me get all three questions in. I learned that on this committee -- you have got to get your questions in. Director Tenet, I would just ask you very quickly about sharing information. You mentioned in your testimony that you are acquiring some very significant information for us in Afghanistan, the safe houses and other places. We hear some grumbling that that information is not being shared with other intelligence agencies -- not only quickly enough, but at all. And I'd like to get your thoughts in fairness: Is that a legitimate complaint? How are you sharing that?

And lastly, Director Mueller, I would ask you do we have in place now a year and a month after September 11th the necessary computer networks to compile counterterrorist information in common databases between our district offices and the FBI across the country and with headquarters? And how do you disseminate that information? General Hayden?

GEN. HAYDEN: I'll go first, yes, sir. The reason we don't need to be reminded is I think we get it. We agree with you totally. We need more linguists and analysts. We hired 120 in fiscal year '02. We hired 11 so far in the first 16 days of fiscal year '03. We have got another 101 in the pipeline for whom we have already offered conditional employment. So we have got it, we are working hard on it. I take your point.

MR. TENET: We've just sent a piece of paper to the committee, Mr. Roemer, about the so-called Doc X (ph) issue, where I basically have written a document that NSA, DIA, the whole community signed up to, to basically have a common repository. We will build a national center that we fund to basically train the right people. And we have put in place procedures that make it clear what's in and what's out, with the expectation that whatever limited information is kept out for real operational reasons will be stripped and moved as fast as possible. I know Mr. Burr has been briefed, and we would be happy to come brief you as well.

REP. ROEMER: Thank you.

MR. MUELLER: As to the question of whether the FBI has the technology in place now to share all common databases around the country, the answer is no. I will tell you what we have done, however. We have and are redoing our technology. One of the key aspects of that is to migrate the data from what we call ACS into a new Oracle 9I (ph) database and put on it a user interface that completely changes the way we have done things in the past. The target date for that is December of '03.

In the meantime, however, because of the necessity to pull together data relating to terrorism, we have pulled in at least three data streams into a database. One of those streams are all of those approximately 123 million pages of images that relate to terrorism throughout the FBI. The second part, the second data stream, will be any of our electronic documents from ACS from 1993 on that relate to terrorism will go into that database. And the third stream is the cable traffic from the intelligence community, both internal and from the intelligence community. And actually the fourth data stream is the information that we picked up from Afghanistan. All of those data streams will be in a common database within the next 30 to 40 days. That database will have the capability -- we will have with that database structure the capability of utilizing the search tools that we have not had the capability to use before.

The other aspect of that is we have not had a capability -- we have not had a LAN, a local area network, within the Bureau that is at the top-secret SCI level. We have put in that -- or in the process of putting in that LAN so that our analysts can have that access to that database on the one hand, and have new information that comes in pushed to them, according to certain profiles in a way that occurs in the CIA. So even though across the FBI we will not be where we would want to be in the next 30 or 40 or 50 days, within the counterterrorism sphere we have made strides.

REP. ROEMER: Thank you for the extra time, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Congressman Roemer. Congressman Reyes.

REP. REYES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, gentlemen, we've -- I wouldlike to associate myself with the comments of many of our colleagues here that are appreciative of your service and leadership that you show. And I also agree with Congressman Roemer that you are the exact three individuals that are going to be very instrumental in helping us address this challenge.

And I would like to start out by telling all of you, and in particular Director Tenet and my colleagues that referred to the homeland defense legislation that is pending -- I wanted to reference also General Hayden's comments about not having to be reminded about Arabic linguists and that we have a role to play interms of determining where the lines of privacy rights versus governments need to protect the homeland are, and that you referenced Director Tenet's comment that we need to get it right. And I absolutely agree with that. And, Mr. Chairman, I voted for homeland defense, but I will not support homeland defense if the national police force amendment is in there. I will not support homeland defense if we don't have the protections of civil service and labor in there as well. And I won't support it because of a concern that I have expressed to you, gentlemen, and that is diversity. And I go back 33 years ago when I first came back from Vietnam after serving my country, was hired by the Border Patrol. There were only three of us that were Hispanics in that class, and had we not had the protections of civil service and labor rights, I would not have had a 26 and a half year career in the U.S. Border Patrol. And I just wrote a letter to the president this week telling him that the flexibility that he seeks is one that Ithink will doom minorities in the 21st century from participating in homeland defense, in the FBI, in the Border Patrol, and in all the federal agencies. And I say that because of my experience. So I support the homeland defense agency, but again will not support it if we don't have those kinds of protections.

I was intrigued by a comment that you made, Director Tenet, in terms of the alerts and the information that is out there, and the fact that we have to sensitize our country to understand that the threat is real. We have had testimony here that has told us that the safest place for a terrorist is in this country, because of all the protections that we have and your reference, general, to bin Laden crossing the border and then all of a sudden getting the protections. But I think -- I strongly believe that that's what has kept us as the best experiment in democracy that we are being attacked for. So it reminds me a lot, Director Tenet, of the alerts. For 13 months I was in Vietnam. It became a joke that if we were told that we were on red alert, that our base was going to hit, you could bet that we weren't going to get mortared or rocketed that night. But if we weren't on alert, we'd get hit. So my question to each of you -- and I don't know, general, I also want to include you in here, is regarding threat assessments. I know that, Director Mueller, last week the committee received a copy of the Justice Department IG's report where it noted that the FBI has never performed a comprehensive written assessment of the risk that terrorists present to this country. And I am wondering, Are you engaged in that now? And also, Director Tenet, what is your role in that process? And also, General Hayden, if you would -- I know that five minutes is not long enough to cover all the things, but you know I want to make sure that we are not going to get into a situation where we treat the symptoms and we don't treat the disease. So if you would address threat assessment.

MR. TENET: Sir, we are preparing just such an estimate that the FBI and NSA will be playing into. It will be in process in the next few weeks, so we will have that kind of comprehensive judgment. We will take Bob's information, obviously the other intelligence information and have it in a package. And obviously, given the importance, we will update it regularly.

REP. REYES: Will that include recommendations of how to fight the threat? Because you know as someone in Congress after spending 26 and a half years in federal law enforcement protecting the border, I don't want our country to have to deal with martial law. Everybody is worried about the sniper in this region right now, and they're talking about bringing in the military assets and all of these other things. But I think terrorists win when we subject ourselves to martial law and those kinds of issues that I mentioned before in my opening comments. So will that include --

MR. TENET: Sir, we won't typically put policy solutions in the estimate, but I am sure we can then use it as a vehicle for the Homeland Security Council, and sit down and walk through it and see what additional measures that may be required as a result of what we can tell.

MR. MUELLER: Let me just -- one thing you mentioned about the use of military resources, and you mentioned it with regard to our current investigation into the sniper. And let me just say that the resources are limited to support interms of giving us a capability that we did not have, but law enforcement remains law enforcement and the military is not playing a role in the law enforcement function on the ground.

GEN. HAYDEN: I would just repeat what I said in my prepared statement: one of the charges that I gave to our work force is we are going to keep America free by making Americans feel safe again. I know there will be unbearable pressures to limit our civil liberties if we ever repeat the events of 11 September.

REP. REYES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Congressman Reyes. Senator Wyden.

SEN. WYDEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin, if I might, with you, Director Tenet. I have been digging into the process for how intelligence documents become classified, and I am increasingly concerned that the CIA and other agencies are designating too many documents as classified and in effect out of reach of the public. Now, my concern has really been heightened by the fact that after 9/11 the president of the United States, and correctly in my view, has been urging the public to help win the war on terrorism -- get involved and contribute and assist in any way. But that's going to be pretty hard to do when key information is kept from the public that would let them in effect pick up on the suggestion the president made.

And what I would like to do is get your sense particularly with respect to threat analysis, and threat analysis, from my understanding, is generally classified as secret or even higher.

Now, with threat analysis there is a substantial amount of analysis that in effect reviews terrorist tactics and procedures in a pretty general sort of way. The information could help the public, for example, know what the terrorists have done in the past, what they may be considering in the future, but it isn't going to compromise a sensitive ongoing operation by providing excessive detail about a specific threat. So, my sense is that if we got away from this process of over-classification and provided this information to the public, we could do more of what the president of the United States is suggesting and act in the public interest.

So, my question to you is why can't more of the terrorist threat analysis, the kind of information I'm talking about, be declassified and shared with the public?

MR. TENET: Well, sir, I think you missed my -- my statement earlier, in my long statement, I said a couple of things. One, it's very clear we have to move information to a whole different set of customers, in the context they need to receive it in. I'm talking about police chiefs, other people that fall outside ofthe intelligence community. And the important thing is, is that we have to find ways to write things that are content rich, which compromise none of those things, and we ought to be able to do it because otherwise I think we will -- we can isolate all this information, and today, you know, when Governor Ridge or anybody speaks, we do that for them, but it's very clear that the information that we possess or that the FBI possesses has to go out, certainly, to the lowest denominator in the country working the problem -- police chiefs, governors, mayors, others, the public -- and we're committed to trying to do that. I mean, there's nothing, you know, when the fate of the country is at stake, we have to do a better job of moving to that customer base the way we take care of the military or the State Department or others, we have to figure out a way to do that.

SEN. WYDEN: Will more terrorist threat analysis be declassified? I mean, I continually hear about how we're going to make changes, and we're going to look down the road at this and that, but I don't see anything actually happening. I'm asking you about a specific area that I think could be declassified in a very specific way. So, if you would respond to that -- can we expect to see a change in classification policy with respect to terrorist threat analysis?

MR. TENET: Sir, we will do our best, yes. We're working with homeland security, and I'm committed to trying to do this.

SEN. WYDEN: Well, I -- I will follow-up because we've only got five minutes. I want it clear today to you and also to Director Mueller, this is going to be a central focus of my work on this committee. I think that too much is being classified now. It runs directly contrary to what the president is wisely counseling, and I think it's got to change.

The only other point I wanted to make, and I know time is short -- Director Tenet, as you know, I and others have been working on putting a terrorist identification classification system into the intelligence authorization. With Senator Shelby's support and Chairman Graham's support, I think we're goingto be able to do it. It would stand in sharp contrast to the State Department's TIPOFF system, which really only gives limited information to a limited number of federal customers, and really doesn't even get to the state and local people.

Tell me, if you would, in the time I have, how you would meet the requirements of this legislation and get the necessary information out, not just throughout the federal government but to the state and local people as well.

MR. TENET: I'd like to see the legislation, and I'll work with you and figure out how we do that, sir. I don't -- I don't have an answer off the top of my head, but I'll sit down and talk -- talk with you and figure out how we work this together.

SEN. WYDEN: Well, we'd -- we'd like to do that, and we have supplied it to you, and we'll do it again.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you.

MR. MUELLER: Mr. Chairman, can I just have a second to --

SEN. GRAHAM: Yes.

MR. MUELLER: -- respond to Senator Wyden's concern about getting information out to state and locals, and the legitimate concern about how we can strip out this information from sources and methods and push it out. We had started in the wake of September 11th a weekly bulletin that goes out every Wednesday to every one of the police departments in the United States that provides that type of information. It probably needs to be expanded on, and -- but it does provide the information that the police officers need on the beat as to what tactics, what they should look for in terms of what terrorists are doing, and I'd be happy to provide you this series of bulletins that we put out over the last several months.

SEN. WYDEN: (Inaudible.)

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you, Senator Wyden. We have now completed the first round of questions, starting the second round. And we'll try to wrap this up in the next 30 minutes or so.

I'd like -- I'm going to ask questions which follow-up on my first-round question which had to do with how are we going to respond to this probability of Saddam Hussein reacting to our attacks against him. But I'd like to make a couple of comments building on statements that our members have made.

The first is to Director Mueller. It's my understanding that the issue that both Congressman Hoekstra and Congressman Reyes raised relative to the comprehensive study of the terrorists who are imbedded in the United States was initially requested in 1999, if that's correct -- is that a correct statement?

MR. MUELLER: I'm not certain, but -- I have not looked at the testimony. I know that we've had it in process and it's in draft -- final draft form.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yes. I -- I think that is critically important because if -- if our people start to see, as the CIA intelligence estimate speculates or states is a probability, which I understand in CIA terms means a 75 percent or better chance of becoming reality -- if they start seeing these increasing waves of attacks here within the United States, there's going to be hell to pay. And Ithink we need to do everything that we can in the time that's available to us to try to build the strongest protection.

My second comment is -- goes back to my initial question, and that is that this program of trying to deter the international terrorists has both the defensive component here at home and the offensive component abroad. I think we've done quite a good job of dismantling the capability of al Qaeda, although we now seem to be in the stage of some regeneration.

My questions have to do with what -- what are we doing now, particularly in terms of preparing, through enhanced intelligence assessments, to begin to dismantle the other terrorist groups who might be the linkage for Saddam Hussein to attack us here at home -- groups such as Hezbollah that have been mentioned in your earlier testimony?

END OF TODAY'S COVERAGE. COVERAGE WILL RESUME ON 10/18.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

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