September 19, 2002 Committee Hearing: Brent Scowcroft and Samuel R. Berger

Joint House And Senate Select Intelligence Committee
September 19, 2002

 

LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES:

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR
SAMUEL R. BERGER, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR


BODY:


HOUSE AND SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEES HOLD HEARING ON
IRAQ (AFTERNOON SESSION)

SEPTEMBER 18, 2002

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

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

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

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


*


CHAIRMAN: We are pleased to have with us this afternoon two former national security advisers, General Brent Scowcroft and Mr. Sandy Berger. We were to have a third, Dr. Tony Lake, who unfortunately has had a medical problem which has precluded him from joining us this afternoon. He had previously submitted his written statement, which will be available and included in the record.

The fight against Osama bin Laden and against terrorism, more broadly, goes back many years. This afternoon we will seek to understand what happened in some of those earlier years in the emerging fight against terrorism. And the views of those who had key policy-making and policy-advising positions as to the sport which they received from the intelligence community.

General Brent Scowcroft served as national security adviser to both President's Ford and President George H. W. Bush. He had a 29- year military career that included a rank of Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force. His career also included a period of service as special assistant to the direct of the joint chiefs of staff, and military assistant to President Nixon.

Mr. Samuel R. Berger has served as assistant and deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs under President Clinton. Mr. Berger, a lawyer, has a long career in public service including sitting on the staff of former Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa, as well as at the State Department.

Gentleman, I very much appreciate your participation this afternoon, and I know that it will be very meaningful to the members of the committee. Each of our two committees has adopted a supplemental rule to this joint inquiry that all witnesses shall be sworn. So I would ask if you would please rise and raise your right hand.

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

BERGER: I do.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

General Scowcroft, we look forward to hearing your statement.

SCOWCROFT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm very pleased to appear before you to discuss such a complex and an important subject. I'm not so efficient as Dr. Lake, so I was unable to provide a written statement, but I am prepared to make a few introductory remarks.

I was asked to focus on the role of terrorism in the first Bush administration, and that will be the focus of my remarks. At the outset, I would like to point out the difficulties of comparing the counter-terrorist situation and the activities of the first Bush administration with those of the present time.

The dominant security challenge of Bush one administration was still the Soviet Union. And that tended to be the organizing focus in which security priorities were viewed. So there was a different kind of an outlook there, and still things that were not related somehow to the Soviet Union, sort of, ipso facto, were not given quite as much attention.

In addition, at that time, terrorism was primarily a phenomenon, which was state sponsored or state assisted or tolerated. And therefore, it was natural for us to think of deterring or dealing with terrorism primarily through the sponsor than through -- with the terrorist organization directly where things like deterrence and so on would have some impact.

A further point, none of the terrorist organizations, at the time, so far as we knew, had global reach. This meant that while U.S. persons, U.S. interest and U.S. assets were not immune from terrorist attack. The United States homeland, in effect, was. And that certainly colored how terrorism was viewed.

Terrorist organizations appear to be either, probably, regionally or issue-related. And even though Hezbollah was thought to behind many of the terrorist attacks that occurred during the Reagan administration, they seemed -- the acts themselves seemed to be relatively independent and uncoordinated events, rather than part of a overall strategy.

Indeed, at the time, there were some terrorist experts who argued that terrorist acts were less an attempt to create damage or to kill people than they were to call attention to the issue which the particular terrorists supported. And I have no idea whether that is really true, but that would be another distinction with the present.

As compared to the Reagan administration, which we succeeded, the incidents and the severity of terrorists' acts diminished significantly during the Bush one administration. There was nothing, for example, comparable to the Beirut embassy bombing, Kuwait embassy bombing, nor the marine barracks. There was, I believe, only one aircraft hijacking during our administration, and no Americans were involved at all.

Nevertheless, there were terrorist activities, which compelled a focus on the terrorist's problems. And there are two issues which stand out in my mind. The first is Pan Am three, which occurred, technically, during the Reagan administration, but on the 21st of December, 1988, so that the fall out was almost entirely in the Bush administration. And the second was the issue of hostages in Lebanon.

I followed the Pan Am 103 problems closely. I received periodic briefings on the investigation. And the effort, which led to Libya and away from Syria and Iran, were the first suspect was, in my mind, a product of brilliant analysis and investigation, and had appeared to be the result of very close coordination between -- among CIA, FBI and the British.

The hostage problem was one which we basically inherited. In the decade beginning in 1982, there were some 30 Westerners kidnapped in the Middle East. When we came to office, I believe, there were about eight hostages being held, most apparently in Lebanon.

In February of 1988, Marine Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins, a member of the UNSO, U.N. Treaty Supervision Organization was captured. And early in the Bush administration, pictures of what seemed to be his execution were released. The emotional impact of that in the country was severe.

The hostage problem was a particularly difficult one. We had various bits of information about some of the hostages, nothing about others. We considered various ideas for trying to rescue the hostages, but the intelligence was never adequate to make the risks appear reasonable, are now common in a moment, further about that.

In the 90's, we saw the emergence of a fundamentalist, an Islamic fundamentalist movement, which became suffused with the terrorist threat. It entered the political structure of a number of countries in the Middle East, so that the character of terrorism was now changing. It was assuming, for example, possibility -- terrorism fundamentalists capturing a political structure of different countries, in addition to the typical Hezbollah-like terrorist.

And this was an entirely new thrust, and one of the best examples of that is Algeria. In 1992, the fundamentalist threatened -- the Algerians were having a two-stage elections. After the first stage, it appeared likely that the fundamentalists would capture the Algerian government. The then government, realizing that, canceled the elections and a civil war ensued replete with much terrorism. And that war has just recently been winding down. Now, my recollection there is that the president was kept well informed through the PDB (ph) of this evolution of terrorism into the broader issue involving politics.

My summing up is that terrorism was a difficult issue for us to deal with, but that, especially compared with the Reagan administration, it was not an issue that was on the rise and getting worse. But now, just as terrorism, as I pointed out the change, so has the challenges before us. I would say that for Bush one intelligence support, in general, seemed adequate to the task as it was then appearing. But as I indicated, I was frustrated then at the lack of judgment capability to help with the hostage problem. We simply could not find out enough about the hostages, who precisely was holding them, where they were held and so on, to make any attempt at rescue feasible, because we stood the chance of having more of them killed in an attempt to rescue one or two. I think that remains an area where improvements are required.

The war on terrorism is, in my mind, primarily an intelligence war, and we badly need an improved capability to get inside terrorist networks if we're to deal with that problem. I would observe, also, that the early 90's began a period of severe budget cuts in the intelligence community. That's a policy-makers issue, that's not an intelligence problem. And that also hampered the ability of the intelligence community to make the transition from the focus on the terrorists' threat to that of the world nurturing terrorists' activities. And that was particularly the case in judgment which has been, in my mind, fairly exclusively focused on the Soviet issue. And human capability in other areas was sparse, and making that transition was made harder.

One last thought about the changed nature of terrorism and that is its global reach. I believe that that change exasperates the bifurcation of the intelligence community. The bifurcation being the U.S. border and intelligence collection and activities outside the border versus inside the border.

It was not much -- not so much of a problem during the Cold War and in the immediate post-Cold War world when most of the problems we faced, intelligence problems, were overseas, were out of the country. So, with the exception of a couple of counter-intelligence cases, when we did run into this bifurcation, it was a -- it was a manageable problem.

The border, so far as the terrorist have concerned, have gone. There is no distinction for terrorist between inside and outside the United States. And I think that makes much more serious the division that we have in between the CIA and the FBI. And I think it goes through two ways.

First of all, when you have to a hand off between any two bureaucracies, there is a considerable loss of efficiency, even if they get along very well. I'm not suggesting those two do not, but that is in itself -- it makes the problem more difficult and some of the things that you are all looking at about 9/11 are clearly a result of that bureaucratic difference.

But in additional to that, there is a, to me, a cultural issue between these two organizations. And that is, they approach the problems of which they're expert, from opposite ends of the spectrum. For the law enforcement organization, and that's fundamentally what the FBI is, you start with an incident. You start with something which focuses your attention and you seek to know more about it, to find out about it and so on, but you start with this central fact.

SCOWCROFT: And you build a case, and as you're building a case you protect the evidence in that case so that it can be used in prosecution.

The intelligence analysts come to us if the have a problem from exactly the opposite way. There are a lot of little, sort of, disconnected things going on in the world. And the analyst looks around and he says, "Is there a pattern here somewhere, that I can discover that, will lead me to be able to prevent something from happening?"

Now, these are both legitimate points of view for the jobs that these two have, but they're not interchangeable and you do not make one an expert and the other simply by putting another label around his neck. And I think that is one of the fundamental problems that we face in the community today. And while we're working on it, I'm not sure that we have adequately solved that difficult issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, General.

Mr. Berger, thank you for joining us.

BERGER: Chairman Graham, Chairman Goss, members of the joint committee, thank you for inviting me here today.

We meet at a time of sober reflection, just a year since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We can never forget what we lost that day, more than 3,000 lives cut short. September 11 changed our perspective and priorities as a nation, perhaps even as individuals.

I welcome the committee's efforts to explore the intelligence community's performance prior to that terrible day, and to determine what can be done better. In order to look forward, we have to look back, ask hard questions, and seek honest answers. All of us want to learn the right lessons to prevent another catastrophe.

At the same time, as I'm sure you're investigation has revealed, it's easier to see how puzzle pieces fit together when you have the final picture at hand. History is written through a rearview mirror, but it unfolds through a foggy windshield. Few things are as clear at the time as they are looking back.

Our challenge now, regardless of party or administration, is to sharpen to the greatest extent we can our ability to look forward, because the dangers and opportunities our country must confront lie before us, not behind.

In that spirit, I would like to, today, first put into perspective, the intelligence the Clinton administration received, and the actions it prompted. And then focus on the challenges I believe our intelligence system still faces in dealing with jihadist threat -- jihadist terrorist threat, and we must do to enhance our capabilities and protect our people.

When President Clinton began his first term in 1993, as General Scowcroft has noted, the intelligence community was primarily focused on the agenda created by the Soviet Union's collapse, the Cold War's end, and our Gulf War victory. Despite the fact that during the '80s, nearly 500 Americans has been murdered in terrorist attacks abroad by Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and others, counter-terrorism was not a top intelligence priority. The CIA maintained no significant assets in Afghanistan after our withdrawal from that region in 1989. Little was known about Osama bin Laden except that he was many financiers of terrorist groups.

Terrorism became a priority for us early with a federal attack on CIA employees at Langley, five days after inauguration, the World Trade Center bombing in February, the Iraqi plot to assassinate President Bush in April, and the day of terror plot against historic landmarks in New York that was thwarted in June.

The terrorist threats came from disparate sources, although perhaps not as disparate as we knew at the time, but they reinforced a larger view that President Clinton expressed early and with increasing frequency, that the very same forces of global integration, that were making our lives better, also were empowering the forces of disintegration, the terrorists, the drug traffickers, the international criminals, sometimes all three together.

In 1995 he was the first world leader to bring the terrorist challenge before the United Nations, calling for a global effort to fight it. And as early as 1996, he spoke of terrorism in a major speech as the enemy of our generation. Director Tenant, in my judgment, shared the president's sense of priority for the terrorist threat.

To reflect that increased priority, working with the Congress, we more than doubled the counter-terrorism budget from 1995 to 2000, during a time of budget stringency, with a 350 percent increase in the FBI's counter-terrorism funds, and although it is classified, substantial increases in CIA's counter-terrorism resources.

We sought to achieve greater coordination by energizing an inter- agency counter-terrorism security group, consisting of senior level officials from all key agencies. And we appointed a tough-minded activist, Richard Clarke, to a new position of White House-based national counter-terrorism coordinator. The CSG (ph) convened several times a week, sometimes every day, to review threats presented by the intelligence and law enforcement community and to follow up.

In 1995, the president signed a presidential directive formalizing the system for periodically reviewing intelligence priorities, and elevating terrorism to a level exceeded only by support for military operations in a few key countries such as Iraq.

How effective was the intelligence community within the context of that heightened priority? Intelligence and law enforcement community did succeed in preventing a number of very bad things from happening before September 11. They thwarted the day of terror plot in New York in 1993. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted of that conspiracy in 1995. They work with foreign intelligence services to track down and capture more than 50 top terrorist, including Ramzi Yousef, responsible for the '93 World Trade Center bombing, Mir Aimal Kansi, who murdered the CIA employees at Langley. With Filipino authorities, they helped to prevent a Manila-based plot to assassinate the pope, and blow up 12 American airlines over the Pacific.

Beginning as early as 1997, they undertook a campaign working with cooperative intelligence agencies around the world that broke up Al Qaida cells in more than 20 countries. In late '99, the CIA warned of five to 15 attacks on American interests during the millennium celebrations that were upcoming. That prompted the largest counter- intelligence operation in history, prior to 9/11.

BERGER: Our intelligence community worked with Jordanian officials to uncover plots against the Radisson Hotel in Amman (ph) and religious holy sites. Following the arrest to Ahmed Ressam crossing into the United States from Canada, they traced materiel seized from him to terrorist cells that were broken up in Toronto, Boston, New York and elsewhere.

During this very intense period, the most serious threat spike of our time in office, I convened national security principals, including the director of central intelligence, the attorney general, the top level people from the FBI, state and defense at the White House virtually every single day for a month for coordinating meetings. I am convinced that serious attacks were prevented by this warning and the actions that resulted.

Yet there were things we did not know or understand well enough. The sophistication of the counter-terrorism center increased significantly after it was substantially increased in size in 1996. And the dedication and commitment of the people who worked there was extraordinary, but the picture of the Al Qaida network developed slowly. It was and is a hard and elusive target as we have seen even since the horrifying events of September 11, which galvanized the world to go to war with Afghanistan and turned Taliban allies, like Pakistan, into its adversaries.

Islamic jihadists have been attacking American targets since the early '80s, but the linkage is among this new breed, hardened by the battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the '80s. And energized against the United States by the military presence we left in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, emerged gradually in the '90s.

Our understanding of bin Laden evolved from terrorist financier in the early '90s, to an increasingly rabid, magnetic and dangerous galvanizer or anti-American hatred in the mid to late '90s. In June 1998, I described bin Laden in a Nightline television interview as the most dangerous non-state terrorist in the world.

The first time intelligence committee presented clear evidence of bin Laden's responsibility for attacks against Americans was following the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, killing 12 Americans and many more Africans. Our focus on bin Laden and our efforts to get him intensified in nature and urgency.

I do believe the CIA was focused on the counter-terrorism mission. What we have learned since 9/11 makes clear to me that the FBI was not as focused as an organization. Director Mueller has acknowledged these problems.

Until the very end of our term in office, the view we received from the bureau was that Al Qaida had limited capacity to operate in the United States, and any presence here was under surveillance. That was not implausible at the time. With the exception of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, not attributed for 9/11 to bin Laden, plots by foreign terrorist in the United States had been detected and stopped. But revelations since September 11 have made clear that the bureau underestimated the domestic threat.

The stream of threat information we received continuously from the FBI and CIA pointed overwhelming to attacks on U.S. interest abroad. Certainly, the potential for attacks in the United States was there. That is why, for example, we established the first program on protecting U.S. critical infrastructure, but the ongoing picture of specific threats we received generally was pointed abroad. Serious efforts appear to be underway to reorient the FBI, making prevention of terrorism its primary mission.

As far as intelligence reporting on threats to civil aviation was concerned, the risk was principally placed overseas and generally involved information about bombing or hijacking. Along with scores of potential threat scenarios from truck bombs to assassinations to public utilities, we had heard of the idea of airplanes as weapons, but I don't recall being presented with any specific threat information about an attack of this nature or any alert highlighting this threat or indicating that it was any more likely than any other.

Mr. Chairman, in a speech before Congress nine days after September 11, President Bush memorably declared, "In our grief and our anger we have found our mission and our moment." As our government builds on, expands and intensifies its efforts to combat terrorism, I'd like to highlight seven important challenges I believe our intelligence community must address if that mission is to succeed.

First, we have to improve dramatically the timely coordination and integration of intelligence. September 11 brought into stark relief the extent of the information breakdown, not only between agencies, but within them in some cases. We have to resolve these problems while recognizing the different elements of the national security community have distinctly different intelligence needs.

BERGER: The creation of a Department of Homeland Security is a step in the right direction. Repeatedly making the new DHS work, in my judgment, will be the correlation of an intelligence analytical unit that is accepted as a full partner in the intelligence community, an integrated all-source fusion center to analyze and prioritize both domestic and foreign threats. It should have the ability to set collection priorities and task partner agencies.

And there will still be a need for a White House-led coordinating mechanism to deal with policy judgments that flow from threat analysis. In my view, that mechanism is better placed within the National Security Council system rather than separate from it.

Second, we must reach a new consensus on the proper balance of responsibilities within the intelligence community, especially now, as General Scowcroft has pointed out, that the lines between wartime and peacetime, foreign and domestic, law enforcement and intelligence have been blurred.

I believe in strengthening the DCI's authority to plan, program and budget for intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination, will permit much more effective integration of our intelligence priorities and efforts, including better concentration on counter- terrorism.

In that connection, I encourage the committee to consider proposals to separate the DCI and the CIA director positions, so the DCI can focus primarily on community issues and not just CIA concerns. In addition, I would end the practice of having every intelligence community agency develop its own bilateral relationships with foreign counterparts, and give the DCI authority to coordinate all intelligence cooperation with other countries. In some countries there are now a dozen or more of these relationships.

Third, the terrorism challenge increasingly increases the importance of predictive intelligence from terrorist targets, the information that tells you where they're going to be and what they're going to do. This is an incredibly difficult challenge, especially when dealing with a shadowy cell-based network.

After new authorities were issued by President Clinton in 1998, we were actively focused on getting bin Laden and his top lieutenants through overt and covert means. The success of those efforts depended upon actionable intelligence on his future whereabouts. Intelligence community stepped up its efforts to anticipate bin Laden's movements, but reliable intelligence on this -- of this nature emerged only once shortly after the African embassy bombing. We acted on the predictive intelligence to attack a gathering of bin Laden and his operatives in Afghanistan. Twenty to thirty Al Qaida lieutenants were killed we are told, and bin Laden was missed by a matter of hours.

Over the next two years we continually sought to obtain predictive intelligence on bin Laden. This included developing and successfully testing promising new technologies in the late 2000, but never again in our time, would actionable intelligence necessary for effective action emerge.

Obtaining better predictive intelligence requires strengthening human intelligence collection. Recruiting these exceptional sources requires effort, patience, ingenuity and professional zeal. It also depends upon a profound understanding of the intelligence targets that comes from the closest possible partnership between the CIA directorate of operations and intelligence.

Fourth, intensified use of new technologies also is essential, particularly downstream information capabilities involving processing, exploitation and efficient distribution. We need to enhance the intelligence community's cadre of computer science and technology experts, as well as expand public, private IT partnerships, building upon Director Tenants innovative IT tele-venture (ph) capital program.

Fifth, we need to strengthen covert option capabilities include paramilitary for maintaining all of them necessary congressional consultations and oversights. Our military special forces are magnificent, but they are organized and trained to work best within the context of a larger declared military operation. There is a need for a strong CIA paramilitary capability for highly sensitive, undeclared operations less compatibility with a Special Forces traditional mission.

Sixth, I believe we should seek the same epic of jointness among our various intelligence units as Goldwater-Nichols initiated in the military. Requiring rotational assignments for intelligence professionals in different agencies in the community can expose them to different techniques and points of view, create relationships that facilitate cross-agency cooperation and improve the performance of the overall community.

Finally, we must address resources not only to collection, but also to analysis, including looking at new ways to fuse open source analysis with information from clandestine sources. We need to build better mechanisms for bringing academic and private sector experts in to close and constructive contact with the intelligence community.

The National Intelligence Council has been used to recruit outside experts for periods in government. We should consider ways of expanding this cooperation, including a quasi official institute to bring experts together in a classified context with intelligence professionals. And there are less formal ways to build virtual networks of cleared outside experts and government intelligence specialists.

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion let me simply say that the hardest challenge for policy-makers is to recognize the larger context, to discern the bigger picture, to understand the historical forces, to hear the sounds of distant footsteps. That requires the best possible intelligence community. For better of for worse, after September 11, nothing is unimaginable anymore. Our challenge is to summon and sustain the will to make our intelligence as good as it must be.

Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Berger and General Scowcroft for two excellent thought-provoking statements.

Our practice is to have designated questioners who will ask questions for a period of approximately 20 minutes. The House is leaving because of a vote that is underway. They'll be returning in approximately 20 to 30 minutes.

First, Senator Rockefeller, and then Senator Shelby.

ROCKEFELLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, gentleman.

Repeat something I said this morning. This is, as Eleanor (ph) has suggested, a -- the terrorist at the World Trade Center, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon, and that needs to be said because you want to free witnesses of any sense that we're going after people to try to place blame until we know a lot more. So that we're -- the terrorists are at fault, and that has to be made very, very clear.

Now you represent very key intelligence policy makers from the years before 9/11, as opposed to this morning's panel which was some of each. And each of you has been involved for year in promoting reform. And I have here, just at random -- I mean, just an endless series of reports, none of them thin, all of them huge and all of them recommending how do you bring the intelligence community together to work efficiently before 9/11 when the world changed forever.

There is an enormous reluctance to do this. I don't, from my observation; I don't think very much has been done in a larger systemic sense, and that troubles me. Each of you have already, in your own way, answered some of the questions that I have, but I want to follow up on them. You have the concept of how do you service customers. You suggested seven approaches.

General Scowcroft, you are at work on something which you're probably not free to discuss, but you have -- you have discussed with us in a classified setting, and so that question of protecting the nation at home, prosecuting the war on terrorism here and abroad, occurs very deeply to each of you.

The first thing that strikes me is -- why is this so impossible? Why is there such an epic against change? I can give you some answers, but I'm not interested in my answers, I'm interested in yours. Whenever ever one really goes at the subject of doing systemic change -- I mean, if there was ever an opportunity that was handed this nation and this nation's intelligence effort and beyond that, to reorganize ourselves in a way which protects the American people, which is the first of -- our first responsibility under the constitution. It is now, it is post 9/11, and you would think people would be coming out of the woodwork in ways to do that.

That is not happening. Changes are being made at the edges. People are taking those changes and making them appear to be enormous events when they're not, because as you said -- I forget your phrase, Mr. Berger, but it was something like jointness, the ethic of jointness. You know, that we're all in this together, and that the intelligence communities are in this together. And yes, they do have separate missions and they do represent certain things, but they also have their campuses. And they have, you know, they've grown up NSA, no such agency, right. In other words, they've grown up within a climate of quite, uniqueness, their lives to themselves, nobody to introduce, their own memorial gardens, which is sacred, their own cafeterias, their own way of doing things, directors come and go, the bureaucracy stays, nobody really challenges, and since 9/11 people have gotten very interested.

The question is, what are we gong to do about? What are we going to do about it? And you just start with the question of no single person over all of this. And we were told this morning that the new undersecretary for intelligence will be able to do that, bring all the different threads together, and an undersecretary in fact do that.

Just throwing some thoughts and I want you to come back with something. I don't -- I can't remember any director of CIA who felt really at liberty with controlling over 15 percent of the budget with the Department of Defense controlling 85 percent of the intelligence budget, you know, to equal the 100 percent -- that they felt really able to wonder beyond what they were -- had the power to participate and authorize. And their authorized limit, which in the case of the Central Intelligence Agency, which the American think is the source of all intelligence, is 15 percent.

Now, if there's a crisis, if a satellite goes dead, if something happens, you can't -- can George Tenant and any of his predecessors, had there been similar situations or whether there were a warrant, go to the Department of Defense and say, I need, you know, "X" hundreds of millions of dollars to do this kind of thing. And will it happen, probably not. Why, because it's my -- at least this Senator's opinion that they know they're going to lose that effort to improve their efficiency.

So what do you -- what do you make of a system where you have a 15 percent, 85 percent divide, where Mr. Berger is calling for sharp increase in preemptive intelligence. And I agree with him. You can't make war without preemptive intelligence. You've got have good intelligence before you make good war. And yes, the Defense Department has its own, but then what do you make of this? They have their own. The Central Intelligence Agency has his own. They both share, in a sense, the control of a variety of other agencies, but the budget belongs to the Pentagon.

What is the fear? What is the political world fear? Is it just the fact there's so many campuses out there that are all complete and settled? Is it the fact that nobody wants to take a big risk or nobody wants to take on the secretary of defense, or if they do they that they're taking on the president maybe? I don't know, but I'm interested in why is it so hard to get us to focus, particularly now, on coordinating our intelligence efforts. That is my short question.

SCOWCROFT: I'll try to give her a shorter answer than the question.

You make a number of very good points. My guess is, if you look at those volumes that you showed, they, in general, go in one direction, which is towards centralization of the intelligence community.

The Department of Defense and the CIA, or the DCI -- let me say, the secretary of defense and the DCI, who are both established by the Legislation National Security Act of 1947. And they were both, sort of, titular heads of agencies that were gathered together from out of the executive branches -- or executive departments of the government. Neither of them had significant powers.

Now, over a period since then, the secretary of defense has accreted a great deal of power. He still is not, probably, quite so much a czar as most other Cabinet heads are, but he has -- he has, pretty much, authority over his constituent elements.

The DCI, despite his title of director of central intelligence, has shared in no such accretion. There have been changes, and they generally gone in that direction, but he still presides over a group of semi-autonomous agencies.

Now, is that good or bad? There are some people who say organizational blocks don't matter, it's the people. And if you get the right people in, you'll get the job done. But I think that in part that's true, that a good organizational structure can't make up for bad personnel. But a good organizational structure can make good people more efficient at what they do.

But every time you increase -- take steps to increase the authority of the DCI, you're taking authority away from somebody else, and no bureaucracy and no bureaucrat likes authority taken away from them. And so the resistance is significant. And by in large, there has not been the crisis within the intelligence community as there has been in the Department of Defense -- I mean, to fight several wars since 1947, to get people to take that step.

Now that's a -- that's a pretty broad answer, but is 9/11 that precipitating? I don't know. I would point out just one thing. In May of 2001, the president established an NSPD-5 to review the intelligence community. And I was honored to chair the external panel of that review. And that was the sense, that even before 9/11, that we had some problems here that need to be worked on.

Now that also conjoins me from getting into too much detail, because that report has been submitted and is still a classified report, but that's my additional response to you. It is the inertia, whether its constructive or destructive depends on your philosophy about organization and its connection to management.

ROCKEFELLER: Mr. Berger?

BERGER: Why is it so hard to change? Perhaps, Senator Rockefeller, you should bring in a -- you should also have a panel of distinguished psychiatrists. It may be more illuminating, but let me give my perspective on that from the intelligence side.

I think that people tend to look at things from the inside out rather than the outside in, so change means -- what about my car pool? And what about the project I'm working? And how will I fit in to the new office? And so there's a personal inertia, and then their vested interest in the status quo.

But I do believe 9/11 is an indispensable moment, and I so I believe the work of this committee -- this joint committee is so important, because the battlefield of the war is now here at home. Therefore, we have to be organized for that war.

My own view, Senator, as I said in my remarks, I think organization does matter. I would have a director of central intelligence who had overall authority for budgets, planning and priorities, working with his colleagues, not execution. He would not own the agencies, but he would have the ability to set overall priorities in concert with his colleagues under the direction of the president.

Number two, as I indicated, I think there still should be two counter-terrorism centers, but I think in the new Department of Homeland Security, there must be a fusion center. It's an analytical center, it's not a collection center, but its ability to take all of this information that you've been getting, all 400,000 documents, and try to see the patterns, that has the ability to task the agencies for collection, and seen as a full partner in the intelligence process.

And third, I think there does still need to be a White House- focused coordinating mechanism, because policy and intelligence are linked together. My own view is best situated within the National Security Council then in a Office of Homeland Security. We can get into that later. It's a side issue. I think it's more central to the way we make decisions in this country involving national security.

But I think this is the moment, Senator, that all of us have to try to change the way we do things.

ROCKEFELLER: And we can either do -- I'm mindful of my time. We can either -- and I have an FBI question for both of you.

We can either say this is what it ought to be, but then if we try to do that everybody will say, "Oh, they're just fooling themselves. They're just naive. They're do-gooders. It will never happen. It's politically not possible." You accept that -- you accept that, and then, by definition, you've immediately cut in half what is it that you seek which will then be leveraged down to 25 percent or below.

So, I mean, I just want that out there. The horror of 9/11 and people talking about carpools, and what kind of a nation are we with respect to change. We're capable of doing some really extraordinary things and this ought to be one of them.

My second and last question has to do with the FBI. I'm interested, and I think that, Mr. Berger, you were fairly clear on this, and I think that you were too, General Scowcroft. I would be interested in the quality of the intelligence that you received, each of you, in your own time, from the intelligence community as compared to the FBI, and I would put that within the following context.

I do not understand why it is that you have the obvious situation of you collect intelligence internationally, and that's central intelligence and others, and then you collect it internally, and that can't be central intelligence because that's invasive and the government all the rest of it, and it's scary. Pass something called the PATRIOT Act says, "Well, yes, you can cooperate on certain things." And then all the sudden there's a little analytical group set up over in FBI of not very many people to do intelligence work. And they're trained in one kind of life, as you said General Scowcroft, they're trained to do one set of things. They're not trained to do the other set of things. We don't have the time. It takes five years to train good analysts, anyway.

So why is it that we're trying to make the FBI do something, which I don't basically think it can do, from this Senator's point of view. And I'm interested, one in what your views are about that. And secondly, what was the quality of the feedback that you got from each of those two separate agencies on common threats?

SCOWCROFT: Well, that's an interesting questions, Senator Rockefeller, because, you know, I was -- as you first mentioned it, I was thinking back intelligence from the FBI. I mean, intelligence information from the FBI, and I was trying to think of cases where we actually have got it.

Not very much, because we -- I was focused on foreign intelligence primarily. There was some on counter-intelligence issues where the FBI intelligence was particularly involved. And the one case I mentioned, Pan Am 103, that one -- but that was investigative intelligence. And the FBI, together with CID, did an absolutely brilliant job on that.

But, I can't think of many -- I can't, right now, recall any instances of pure intelligence product from the FBI. And I don't say that pejoratively, at all.

ROCKEFELLER: And I don't ask it in that fashion, because what they do they do superbly.

SCOWCROFT: They do superbly, and it would be a shame to say, "Now FBI, you're going to focus wholly on intelligence collection and we're not going to worry about law enforcement any more. That would be -- that would be a serious mistake.

But I don't know how to answer your question because I can't separate FBI intelligence out very well.

BERGER: Senator, let me say first, there are extraordinarily dedicated people in the FBI and we've seen that since 9/11 as we've looked back. And the FBI had some successes here. For example, breaking up the '93 day of terror. But by in large, if there was a flood of intelligence information from the CIA, there was hardly a trickle from the FBI.

I think that relates somewhat to how they saw their mission. I think it relates to their sense of the Al Qaida fundamentalist threat in the United States, which I think either was much less by the end of 2000 than it seems to be today, or it was underestimated, and the priority given to this area of counter-intelligence.

So it's a little bit like the, you know, the person who looks for his keys under the light pole, because that's where the light is. We were getting a lot of information on foreign threats. We were getting very little information on domestic capabilities and threats, and that obviously influenced the focus.

ROCKEFELLER: I thank you both.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my questions.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator Rockefeller.

Senator Shelby?

Senator, before you commence, after Senator Shelby we will then turn to questions from the members of the committee, assuming that we still are in a situation where our House brethren have not returned. The order of questioning will be Senator Bayh, Senator Durbin, Senator DeWine, Lugar, Inhofe, Feinstein and Kyl.

SHELBY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, General Scowcroft and Mr. Berger, we appreciate you coming here today, and we appreciate your insight and your experience. I respect both of you.

I especially appreciate Mr. Berger's insight into the creation of the intelligence component at Homeland Security. It's something Senator Graham and I have been working with both Senator Lieberman, Senator Thompson, the White House and others to create what Mr. Berger described. We think it's very important. Without it, we doubt that Homeland Security could be what it needs to be to deal with that. So I appreciate your insightful remarks.

I'd like to pick up on what, first, what Senator Rockefeller was talking about. We all respect the FBI and we know the FBI has no fear when it comes to forensic science, you know, investigations and stuff. I believe they're great and they've got great people there. And I believe Director Mueller is bringing leadership down there, but we'll have to measure that with time.

Having said that, Mr. Berger, on page six of your testimony, and I'll quote again and it's similar to what you said earlier, "I do believe the CIA was focused on the counter-terrorism mission. What we've learned since 9/11 makes clear that the FBI, as an organization, was not as focused. Director Mueller has acknowledged these problems. Until the very end of our time in office..." this is the Clinton administration, "... we view -- we view -- we receive from the bureau was that Al Qaida had limited capacity to operate in the U.S. and any presence here was under surveillance."

Gosh, I'm not going to have to comment on that, you know, but that's discerning.

SHELBY: And I think your remarks were true -- ring true.

I'd like to get into something else now.

Mr. Berger, first I'll direct some questions at you. I have some observations to make first.

In August 1998, after Al Qaida bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Clinton had strong words about how we must deal with the terrorist threats. He declared, and I'll quote, that "countries that persistently host terrorists have no right to be safe havens. Our battle against terrorism..." he said, "... will require strength, courage and endurance." He pledged -- that's President Clinton that we, and I quote, "will not yield to this threat. We will meet it, no matter how long it may take. This will be a long, ongoing struggle. We must be prepared to do all that we can for as long as we must."

President Clinton also went on and said -- he warned that "the risk from inaction from America and the world would be far greater than action for that would embolden our enemies, leaving their ability and their willingness to strike us in tact."

President Clinton went on to say and he promised, "There will be no sanctuary for terrorists. We will persist and we will prevail."

Those are very strong words. I agreed with it. I welcomed it. And they sound a lot, to me, like what President Bush has said recently and said well that -- and said just before we destroyed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with overwhelming force.

By the time he spoke those words, President Clinton, if I recall right, is already or about that time, contemporaneous with, launched a missile strike upon a camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan.

After that speech, Mr. Berger, what steps did the administration take to fight a decisive, clear battle against terrorism?

BERGER: Well, Senator, as you point out, first of all, after the attacks on our embassy in Afghanistan and -- excuse in Kenya and Tanzania, there were 12 Americans killed -- many more Africans. Quite soon -- within two weeks, we had developed very good intelligence indicating that 200 to 300 Bin Laden operatives would be at a fixed location, with Bin Laden.

We attacked that facility. We killed many Al Qaida people. What I was told afterwards was that Bin Laden probably had left a few hours before, indicating the difficulty of getting predictive intelligence -- getting inside the intense cycle.

We can talk about Sudan. I believe hitting that plant was the correct thing to do. I know that the Sudanese have paid a lot of money to lobbyists and public relations firms to try to portray it as a toothpaste factory. I would be happy to make that case, if you'd like, as to why that was an appropriate target.

From that point on...

SHELBY: That is a disputed...

BERGER: Well, it may be disputed...

SHELBY: ... -- that would be a...

BERGER: ... but I...

SHELBY: Yes.

BERGER: ... believe we were correct then. And I believe we are correct now. And I think...

SHELBY: Was there a dispute in the intelligence community?

BERGER: There was no...

SHELBY: We've always heard that there was.

BERGER: ... dispute.

SHELBY: As to whether or not this was a military target...

BERGER: There was no dispute presented...

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: ... to the principals or the president.

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: That facility was one in which there was VX chemical precursor found, which was owned by the military industrial corporation of Sudan, which we knew was their vehicle for developing chemical weapons -- which had received millions of dollars from Bin Laden. And we've actually learned since, from an Al Qaida operative, that they were working with Sudan on chemical weapons in Khartoum. And I would much rather be defending the decision to hit that place than to not having hit that place if two weeks later chemical weapons had shown up in New York City subway system or in Alabama.

So as for that, I believe that was the right decision to make. We proceeded on the information that we received. Whether down in the bowels...

SHELBY: Do you believe that was good information?

BERGER: I have gone back to the agency on a number of occasions because I've been defending this...

SHELBY: Sure.

BERGER: ... from time-to-time since. And at the highest level, that information has been validated to me.

Now, with respect to what else was going on, from '98 on, we embarked upon a very intense effort to get Bin Laden -- to get his lieutenants -- through both overt and covert means. I cannot discuss in this committee...

SHELBY: I know.

BERGER: ... the covert efforts, which involved working with...

SHELBY: Let me go back -- you say '98 -- what about -- was it '96? Was he ever offered up by the Sudanese people? I was recently -- Senator Spector and I were in Khartoum. They told us that they offered him up to the Clinton Administration and that you all declined. Was that a real offer or was that just talk or what?

BERGER: Senator, can I answer the last one and then get...

SHELBY: Absolutely.

BERGER: ... to the next one?

SHELBY: Sure.

BERGER: You ask them faster than I can answer them.

SHELBY: No, I can't do that.

BERGER: You asked what we did after '98.

SHELBY: Yes.

BERGER: At that point, our intense focus was to get Bin Laden -- to get his key lieutenants. The president conferred a number of authorities on Intelligence Committee for that purpose.

SHELBY: "Get him" -- that meant kill him if you had to -- capture...

BERGER: That's correct.

SHELBY: ... or kill him or just capture?

BERGER: I don't know what I can say in this hearing, but capture and kill -- until the chairman rules me out of order. It was no question, the cruise missiles were not trying to capture. They were not law enforcement techniques. OK?

We, unfortunately -- despite intense effort -- had actionable intelligence only that time. Whether more could have been done to get more actionable intelligence, I don't know. We developed some new techniques at the end of 2000 -- some technical means to get corroborating information on Bin Laden's whereabouts. Those were tested successfully in 2000. I don't know whether they were used again after 2000.

So our focus was, in addition to breaking up Al Qaida cells around the world -- in addition to a number of other things we were doing, our focus was getting Bin Laden -- A -- B, putting pressure on the Taliban. We froze Taliban assets -- about $250 million. We went to the United Nations -- we got sanctions on the Taliban. We sent senior diplomats to meet with the Taliban and issue to them privately the same threat President Bush issued publicly after September 11, that is, if there was any further incident involving Bin Laden, they would be held personally accountable, as the Taliban.

So I think that was intense effort. I think that it was directed at personnel. It was not directed at jungle gyms or facilities.

I think the judgment was to hit a camp and not get top Bin Laden people would have made the United States look weak and Bin Laden look strong. And I think the potential of going to war with Afghanistan before 9/11 was not something that I think was feasible. No one on this committee was seeking that or I think elsewhere.

Now, you asked about Sudan. There never was an offer, Senator, from Sudan to turn Bin Laden over to the United States.

SHELBY: Were there discussions?

BERGER: There was an effort in '96.

SHELBY: Were they discussions?

BERGER: Yes. There was an effort in '96 taking place. There were contacts with the Sudanese.

Understand, Senator, the Sudanese government in the mid '90s was one of the worst terrorist states in the world. Maybe close to Iraq. They tried to assassinate Mubarak. They had been engaged in a civil war in which two million of their people had been killed. They had bombed their own people at feeding facilities. They practiced slavery and discriminated in gross ways against the Christian community in that -- these were not nice people. That's point number one.

Number two, we tried to -- they wanted to get off the terrorism list. We had put them on the terrorism list in '93 because of all of this and many other things. They wanted to get off the terrorism list. And from time-to-time they would say, "Just, you know, take us off the terrorism list and we'll be nice guys."

We said, "Do something -- prove it -- get rid of Bin Laden -- expel all these other groups." There never was -- and I have spent a great deal of time on this since 9/11 because the question has come up more than once. There never was -- and certainly no official I've talked to at any agency is aware of any offer by the Sudanese to turn him over to the United States.

We pressed the Sudanese to expel him. We actually had discussions, I believe with the Saudis and others about whether they would take him. They said no. But the Sudanese never offered that. They've said so since, most recently.

And if I can say this, in conclusion, if you think that Tarrabbie (ph) and Bashere (ph) who were as vile a bunch of thugs as exist, was going to turn Osama Bin Laden over to a hostile country, whether that was Saudi Arabia or the United States, I think that overestimates the kind of people we were dealing with. We gave them every opportunity from 1996 on, even after -- let me just finish, Senator -- even after Bin Laden was expelled -- to give us information -- to turn over information. We met with them continually all over the world. They never gave us anything.

Since 9/11, there's a bit of a revisionism going on because they don't want President Bush to single them out as the next target. And there are, obviously, an attempt to rewrite history.

SHELBY: Do you think they've changed very much since September the 11th, last year?

BERGER: Well, I'm just reading that they're now probably taking Al Qaida resources back to Sudan. That is, they now, according to what I've read -- even though the Sudanese now were -- the Al Qaida are transferring gold and other materials -- Al Qaida resources. So it doesn't sound to me as if they've made much of a fundamental break, although they have had some negotiations with Senator Danforth about ending the civil war.

SHELBY: Back in '96, had there been a decision made at that point in your discussions with National Security Council to take, if you could, Osama Bin Laden, dead or alive, if you could? Had that decision been made then? Or was that later?

BERGER: I think in '96 that decision was never presented. I think there had been a discussion, as I understand it, at the CSG -- at the assistant secretary level -- about could we find some place to take him? Could we take him here? Or could we take him to Saudi Arabia? But those were hypothetical because we never had such an offer from the Sudanese.

SHELBY: But what I was getting at...

BERGER: And in 1996, Senator, I don't believe that the law enforcement community had evidence linking him to attacks on the United States. We have subsequently found out, since 9/11, that there may be linkages between Bin Laden and World Trade Center '93 and other activities. But in '96, that was not the...

SHELBY: In '96, you were...

BERGER: ... standard knowledge.

SHELBY: ... very interested in him.

BERGER: In '96, he was certainly on the radar screen.

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: He was not as -- I would say this -- in '96, he was on the radar screen. In '98, he was the radar screen.

SHELBY: He was? OK.

I want to shift over to, Mr. Berger, something else I think you know something about. The White House commission on the aviation safety and security, headed by Vice President Gore, as I understand recommended that the U.S. develop and implement a system of airline passenger profiling. According to the commission, and I quote, "Based on information that is already in computer databases, passengers could be separated into a very large majority who present little or no risk and a small minority who merit additional attention." These are techniques that the Customs Service has long used and which could play an important role in preventing terrorist from being able to commit the attacks of September the 11th.

As I recall, and you might correct me, did anything ever come of the commission's recommendation for doing this? In other words, were these recommendations...

BERGER: As I recall, Senator...

SHELBY: ... implemented?

BERGER: ... the commission was established after TWA 800...

SHELBY: Yes.

BERGER: ... which, at the time, we thought was a terrorist act. We, subsequently...

SHELBY: Found out it was...

BERGER: ... concluded that it was a mechanical failure. But I remember very well the night that the plane went down. And we were very concerned that it was a terrorist attack. And one of the things that President Clinton did was to appoint this commission to look at aviation security.

That commission came up with a number of recommendations. My understanding is some were implemented, some were not implemented by the FAA, some were not implemented by the Congress.

So I think -- I can't tell you piece-by-piece, since I was not directly involved in that which recommendations were implemented, which died at the FAA and which died in the Congress.

SHELBY: Mr. Berger, the National Security Council sets priorities, as I understand it, and allocates, to some extent, resources to the most important issues.

SHELBY: How high on the screen did fighting Al Qaida rank on your list of priorities up until the time -- January 2000 that you left...

BERGER: Well, I'll take...

SHELBY: ... 2001 (inaudible).

BERGER: ... this in a couple of stages, Senator.

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: In 1995, the president issued PPD-35...

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: ... which, for the first time, was an organized system of establishing intelligence priorities. And I think General Scowcroft has very well described the situation prior -- in the '80s where the focus was more on the Cold War and more on the post-Cold War issues.

So, in 1995, we set up a system for setting and periodically reviewing intelligence priorities. At that point, intelligence was placed at a level exceeded only by support for military operations and a few key countries, such as Iraq.

And at the same time, the president issued PDD-39, which essentially directed the agencies to give terrorism the very highest priority.

So I think from '95 on, budgets started going back up. The focus was more intense. The Bin Laden cell was set up at the agency. I guess he's probably the only terrorist that had his own acronym -- that got dubious distinction.

We were, obviously, increasingly focused. And I think with '98 -- with the bombing of the African embassy, where, for the first time, the intelligence and law enforcement community was able to say to us, "This is Al Qaida. This is Bin Laden." That's the first time we had been able to have that kind of predicate.

I think at that point, Bin Laden and Al Qaida were among the highest priorities of our administration.

SHELBY: The yellow light's on.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator.

Senator Bayh?

BAYH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony today and for your excellent written submission to the committee. And I want to thank you both for your service to our country.

I was particularly interested in your remarks about the importance of coordinating and improving the communication among the different services branches.

Senator Rockefeller asked about that at some length, so I won't get into that.

Sandy, I'd like to ask you...

Brent, I think you covered it pretty well.

In your comments, you suggested that within the department of homeland security there be a unit focused upon coordinating intelligence. What does that -- what is your opinion about how that would interface with the FBI? Does that mean you agree with Senator Rockefeller's skepticism about whether the FBI can be reformed to carry out that function? Or...

BERGER: No, I don't think it devalues or undermines the FBI in any way. I think that we can either reform the FBI to make it more focused on counter-terrorism. Or invent a new institution and have to build it from scratch. It seems to me to make more sense, at least in the first -- it's to try to make the FBI, as Mr. Mueller is trying to do, into primary focus counter-terrorism prevention.

They do have a lot of talented people and skills in investigation.

Now, they're collecting, essentially, and analyzing -- CIA is collecting and analyzing -- they both have CTC -- counter-terrorism centers.

One of the things we did, by the way, was we took an FBI person and made them deputy at the CIA counter-terrorism center. And we took a CIA person and made him or her deputy at the FBI CTC center. Obviously, that was helpful, but not enough.

We also had a counter-terrorism group that was taking the information that it had and looking at it collectively. But I believe to have a fusion cell in the new department -- not the collection agency, it would be an analytical function. It would take all of the information that it got from the CIA -- that it got from DIA -- that it got from NRO -- that it got from FBI and it would be dedicated to looking at this. And if it was a second pair of eyes or set of eyes to what was happening in the constituent agencies, all the better.

BAYH: Well, this is something we need to devote -- from my perspective, the two big issues we need to grapple with going forward are how to better coordinate and improve communication among the different agencies. You've both spoken to that. Senator Rockefeller spoke to that. And then what to do about our domestic security and intelligence-gathering capacities and how to optimize those.

I must say that I've told this to Senator Rockefeller, I share some of his concerns in this area and it's one of the big picture items I think we need to think through. So we deeply appreciate the insights that both of you can share with regard to that.

Just a couple of other things, because I know I don't have much time. This is a little bit sensitive, but I think we need to address it. We are now focused upon Iraq and what to do about the weapons of mass destruction that are largely being driven by their leader, Saddam Hussein.

The question, gentlemen, specifically -- I'd be interested in your perspective on both. As you know, it's prohibited by federal statute -- it's a felony for us to authorize the killing of a head of state. And there are other executive orders that restrict our ability to eliminate individuals who are non-heads of state. Is that a policy we should rethink? We're in the process, here, of putting an untold number of American service men and women in harm's way and yet we're constrained from accomplishing a similar objective through more precise and direct means.

Do either of you have an opinion about whether we should revisit these restrictions?

BERGER: I think they were put into office when General Scowcroft was national security adviser the first time.

SCOWCROFT: Yes.

BERGER: So I will defer to him first.

SCOWCROFT: Yes, they were.

I believe we should probably rescind them. One of the objectives to rescinding then is that it encourages terrorists to think that it's OK to eliminate heads of state. But it gets us into all sorts of complications and drawing legalistic lines.

One of the things we found out in 1989 -- there was an attempted coup in Panama. And we tried to help a little, but not very much. After it, we were looking into it and what we found is that some of the CIA personnel who were -- I wouldn't say "involved," but who knew about it and were meeting with the coup plotters and so on, were concerned about being accessories. Because if you mount a coup, you know, it's very likely there are going to be some people killed.

So we tried, afterwards, to amend the executive order to take account of that. But it seems to me highly legalistic. It was designed specifically after the investigations of the intelligence community in 1975 with some pretty far-fetched attempts at Fidel Castro.

I think it's anachronistic and we ought to be duly respectful of all of the reasons why you might not want to do that. But to be pro- scribed, I think is a mistake.

BERGER: Senator let me -- I don't know whether this is a slightly different perspective or not. The executive order was -- we received rulings in the Department of Justice -- executive order not prohibit our ability -- prohibit our efforts to try to kill Bin Laden because it did not apply to situations in which you are acting in self-defense or you're acting against command and control targets against an enemy, which he certainly was.

Clearly, whether or not actions against -- if self-defense can justify a war, then presumably it could justify somewhat more surgical action.

And so, while I do have some of the concerns that General Scowcroft has, if I believed that it was not an impediment to surgical actions, with respect to an enemy, as it was not in the case of Bin Laden and might not be in the case of Saddam Hussein, I would have to, then, measure the fact that, as a practical matter, it didn't stop us from doing anything.

From the public international blow-back that we would get from the symbolic statement that we are now going to go around killing foreign leaders -- I mean, I think it depends a lot on whether it is a practical constraint about doing -- with respect to doing with Saddam Hussein what the president may believe is necessary. I believe, legally, based on the rulings that we got, that it would not be a bar to targeting a -- in self-defense -- a command-and-control target. And if the head over the army is not a command-and-control target, I don't know what is.

BAYH: Mr. Chairman, I see my time has expired.

I would just add one comment. We can't discuss it in this forum, obviously, but we have heard from some of the folks who deal in these kind of areas and they're pretty reluctant, absent an express authorization, to wander too far down that path, for fear of having the wrong legal interpretation -- someday being faced with a lawyer who has a different analysis of some kind.

So I do think it's an issue we ought to...

BERGER: We certainly would have to have clarity from the president of the United States or something like that.

Thank you.

BAYH: Thank you very much, gentlemen.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator Bayh.

Senator Durbin?

DURBIN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you both for joining us.

I've listened to the line of questioning from Senator Rockefeller, Senator Bayh and others. And I'd like to ask you -- it seems to be very apparent to us, as we review the capabilities of the agencies that are tasked with gathering intelligence that there is a wide disparity in their information technology and capability. I would say that the FBI is barely out of the Stone Age in terms of computer capability. Other agencies, apparently, National Security Agency and others, are very, very sophisticated.

I'd like to ask General Scowcroft and Mr. Berger, under your watch, who had the responsibility of oversight on something as basic as the information technology of each of these agencies and their physical ability to gather, review, coordinate and share information?

SCOWCROFT: That's a very good question, Senator. And I think the answer is it depends on the particular intelligence agency and who it belongs to. And in many cases, there is divided responsibility. And what has really happened is each one of the individual components has built their own system. And in many cases, the systems can't talk to each other.

DURBIN: Were you aware of that?

SCOWCROFT: Yes.

DURBIN: And were any efforts made under your watch to address that?

SCOWCROFT: Yes. And there has been some progress made in combining systems or in putting what I would call an interpreter -- an electronic interpreter -- to allow the search to go on.

But there's no enthusiasm, in many cases, to share this data. Each one likes to keep the family jewels...

DURBIN: I was afraid you were going to say that.

SCOWCROFT: So...

DURBIN: I was afraid it wasn't just a matter of a breakdown of computer architecture, but really was mindset that basically said, "Well, why would we want to talk to 'those' people?"

SCOWCROFT: That is some part of the problem. I'm not -- this is a subset of a larger problem that I think that Senator Rockefeller brought up.

DURBIN: Thank you.

Mr. Berger, would you address that as well?

BERGER: Senator, in some cases, this is a matter of collective priority or a matter of priority for the president or for the national security adviser. Early on in our administration, for example, it was the judgment of the, then, DCI that our satellite infrastructure was woefully inadequate and that we had to make major investments to deal with the information technology -- communications technology revolution. And so, in the early '90s we spent more money on satellites. That was something we shared -- an overall assessment that was done with the Congress.

DURBIN: Who had the corporate responsibility of directing that discussion?

(CROSSTALK)

BERGER: There was enough money involved that that was a matter -- that both was -- this committee was seized (ph) with -- both committees, as well as off the management budget and the overall budgeting process. This was a big chunk of money to rebuild our -- update our satellite system.

So in some sense, it's a overall responsibility. I would say the day-to-day management systems within a particular agency are generally the responsibility of the head of the agency.

DURBIN: Well...

BERGER: It's not possible from the NFC.

DURBIN: Well, Mr. Berger, let me -- the point I'm making is this -- what they serve in the cafeteria at the FBI as opposed to the CIA is irrelevant. But their computer technologies and whether or not they are complimentary and consistent with the architecture of computers at other intelligence agencies would seem to be a matter of national security. And when we find -- in our first oversight hearing of the FBI, last year -- the first on in, I think, 12 or 14 years, maybe longer, the primitive state-of-the-art of computers at the FBI, it suggests no one was watching -- not just under your watch...

BERGER: Yes.

DURBIN: ... but going back for the first...

BERGER: Well, I mean, those budgets were increased substantially. And I would -- I think it'd be worth looking at what happened to that money. The CT budget and the FBI, according to Director Freeh, increased 350 percent. So I think it's worth looking inside that and finding out what the allocation.

DURBIN: But now we have...

BERGER: But I say there were efforts to increase coordination. And, in particular, we energized a high-level senior group -- the counter-terrorism security group -- these were assistant secretaries -- for counter-terrorism in all of the key agencies. They met three, four -- sometimes every day to look at intelligence.

Now, I think looking post-9/11, not everything was always provided to that central mechanism. So there has to be a willingness -- this gets, I suppose, to culture -- on the part of the agency...

DURBIN: I would just...

BERGER: ... to...

DURBIN: ... -- I'm out of time.

BERGER: ... share that information.

DURBIN: I'm out of time. And I'll just close by saying...

BERGER: (inaudible)

DURBIN: ... I think this is emblematic of what the challenge is -- if we do not have one person at the top of the heap somewhere near the White House, if not there, who is taking and looking at something as basic as information technology at these agencies and saying, "They ought to be able to communicate with one another if they wanted to," how will we ever reach the point of having a conversation where they can meaningfully be told, "Now, communicate"?

We seem to have lacked that in previous administrations. And if we're talking about reforming intelligence, I hope this is part of it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BERGER: I think some efforts were made, but I think more efforts need to be made, Senator, absolutely.

DURBIN: OK.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Senator Durbin.

Congressman Reyes, I had indicated that you were going to be the next questioner and then two persons who were here this morning have arrived. And so, staying with our first arrival policy, it will be Congressman Castle and then Congressman LaHood and then Congressman Reyes.

Congressman Castle?

CASTLE: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Unfortunately I missed a lot of your testimony because of other responsibilities, including voting on the floor. So I'm not exactly sure what's been stated. So I apologize if I'm re-plowing land you've just plowed moments ago.

But I'm just interested in the broad conclusion of whether -- I mean, based on what we heard yesterday -- you probably read about it in summaries, if you didn't see it at all -- about what we actually knew or did not know with respect to Al Qaida in the intelligence community.

And my first question is, is it your judgment that we knew and we had broadcast the fact that they were capable of carrying out a mass casualty attack on U.S. soil?

One of my concerns, frankly, is that sometimes we don't talk publicly enough about the potential threats which could embrace all Americans in helping prevent it. And my question to you is was that something which you felt was publicly issue before it happened on September 11, 2001, beyond just the intelligence community knowing?

BERGER: Well, I think there was -- again, this is a -- it's a scene that's like a photograph developing and developer, which, you know, becomes clearer over time and certainly becomes clearer after 9/11.

But I think that as we got into '97-'98 it was clear that there was an Al Qaida network -- that Bin Laden was at the center of. This was something that we talked about a great deal. And I said earlier, Congressman, that, you know, in June of '98 I said on television Bin Laden is the number one terrorist threat to the United States.

And where there were -- the president spoke about terrorism and Al Qaida and Bin Laden very frequently. I mean, I provided the committee staff about 270 single-spaced pages of statements that President Clinton made about terrorism -- Al Qaida -- Bin Laden over the eight years -- this thick.

Where there was specific threat information, obviously, that was provided. But we did not really have, as I said earlier, specific threat information with respect to the United States. And I think that the threat in the United States was under-estimated.

The threat information we generally had -- for example, we had threat information that the Tirana embassy in Albania was going to be attacked. We sent 300 Marines and stopped the attack.

During the millennium, we warned the American people that there was a general threat of terrorist activity during the millennium and I've talked about what we did in that connection.

But I don't think there was specific threat information with respect to the United States that we did not provide. And in general, I think, as I said earlier, the threat picture in the United States I think was not sufficiently seen.

CASTLE: Well, I'm not trying to play the blame game at all with this. I mean, I am one of those who wishes very much to resolve these problems as far as the future is concerned. But, I mean, you were there in 1998 when the attacks took place, as the national security adviser. And Bin Laden, at that point, was clearly identified by everybody. And yet we had testimony yesterday that the FBI really didn't have a lot of resources focused on this. And my sense is that even though most of us who have worked either on this committee or at the White House knew about this, that perhaps the actual intelligence community did not have quite the focus we would like to have on Bin Laden.

And I realize that the president did and I realize that you did, but the question is, in a broad sense, did we, in the intelligence community as a whole -- and this is not faulting anybody when I say this...

BERGER: Yes, I understand.

CASTLE: ... have the focus that we should have had on Bin Laden in retrospect. And I realize in retrospect everything's a little bit simpler.

BERGER: Congressman, I was puzzled by the statement by the FBI that they didn't understand...

CASTLE: The statement yesterday?

BERGER: ... -- that I read in the paper today...

CASTLE: Right -- exactly.

BERGER: ... that they didn't understand the Al Qaida or Bin Laden threat. They met three times a week in a highly secret counter- terrorism security group in which all of this information was on the table. We went through the millennium together where we knew that there would be -- we were told there would be five to 15 attacks in the United States. We met at the White House at the highest level -- attorney general -- Director Freeh -- secretary of state -- every single day for a month for at least an hour. We were a high-level fusion cell, if you want to call it that during the millennium period. And nothing happened in the millennium. I believe we stopped some things from happening.

How you could walk away from those experiences and not understand -- we were trying to kill Bin Laden. We had dropped cruise missiles on him. How you could not understand -- I think this is an internal FBI issue of communication from top to the field and field to the top. But there is no question, I think, that Al Qaida was a threat -- Bin Laden was threat, certainly within all of the elements of the intelligence community.

CASTLE: My time is up and I can't ask you another question I wanted to ask you. But maybe we can discuss it someday and it would have been whether you were satisfied with the extent of our human intelligence during the period of time that you were in the White House...

BERGER: I'd be happy to at any time, Congressman.

CASTLE: ... (inaudible) and bring it out.

Thank you, sir.

I yield back.

CHAIRMAN: And will you give us the answer to the question?

We've had another member added to our list, so the questioning now will be Mr. LaHood, Mr. Chambliss and then Mr. Reyes.

(UNKNOWN): I'm sorry, Mr. Chambliss did speak this morning.

CHAIRMAN: Oh, he did? I'm sorry.

(UNKNOWN): Clerical error.

CHAIRMAN: Clerical error -- you did speak this morning, OK?

So it's Mr. LaHood and then Mr. Reyes.

Mr. LaHood?

LAHOOD: Well, thank you for your fairness in conducting this hearing, Mr. Chairman, we appreciate it.

Can I ask both of you gentlemen -- were you shocked and surprised on 9/11 or 9/12 and after you began to learn about -- I don't mean shocked from a personal point of view, but shocked at the news -- who the people were -- who was involved -- how they did it -- and particularly you, Mr. Berger, after just coming off of having worked in the administration in such a high-level position? And I know you worked very hard and spent a lot of hours on a lot of these activities.

I'm wondering, though, when you read the details of what happened, were you surprised by any of it in terms of the people involved and how they did it and how they carried it off and the fact they were able to do it?

BERGER: I was not surprised, Congressman, by who was responsible for a second. I was stunned by the magnitude of this -- surprised by how they had used primitive, in a sense, instruments. This was not -- we had spent a lot of time on trying to anticipate weapons of mass destruction threats -- trying to build up our stockpile of Cipro -- trying to build up our smallpox vaccines -- trying to get first responders trained in the beginning -- to anticipate a potential WMD attack. So I was not surprised by responsibility because I thought it was the only terrorist organization that had the capability of doing simultaneous activities like that.

I was surprised by their ability to strike here as sharply as they did and I suppose by their ability to take box cutters and airplanes and turn them into weapons of mass destruction, but not by responsibility.

LAHOOD: Mr. Scowcroft, do you have any comments?

SCOWCROFT: Yes. I was not surprised. I was horrified. I was surprised at the coordinated nature of the attack -- that did surprise me. But I would say, you know, the safest place in the world for a terrorist in inside the United States. Then he becomes a U.S. person with a lot of protections that we don't give him, or anybody else, outside. And so as long as they don't do something that trips them up against our laws, they can do pretty much all they want.

So all you have to do is pick some people that are clean to start with -- that don't have records. And they can do all of these things.

So I think what -- in a sense, what we were all surprised at -- we have had this notion for -- ever since, really, terrorism became a threat -- that somehow the United States was immune. It was just too complicated for them to extend their organizations and to mount a sophisticated attack inside the United States.

This was not actually very sophisticated. But it didn't really have to be, given the freedom with which they could operate -- go in and out -- back and forth.

LAHOOD: Mr. Berger, were you surprised or shocked at the level of non-communication between and within agencies that were in the business of collecting intelligence and sharing it with the highest levels of our government?

BERGER: I have been continually disappointed since 9/11, Congressman, just reading the newspapers about the difficulties of communication within agencies -- from people in the field up and the fact that there was inadequate sharing of information between them.

LAHOOD: Do you think that was true during your stewardship?

BERGER: Well, we tried to address the horizontal communication issue in a number of ways. And I think probably it was better, but it was not sufficient.

We energized -- we got all of the key players in a room three times a week or sometimes every day to go through all the threat information and to share it and talk about what to do about it -- what more they needed to do.

The FBI was there -- the CIA was there -- the Justice Department was there, number one.

Number two, we took and we decided that an FBI person should be deputy at the CTC at CIA and vice versa.

So we took steps to increase horizontal coordination and I think it probably was better. But it's clear that not everything was being put on the table.

LAHOOD: Can I just stop you, because I have one other question.

Both of you have served in high public office and both -- I know Mr. Scowcroft has been on commissions. There's an idea floating around Washington -- around Congress -- to establish a blue ribbon commission to look into what happened. I would appreciate your thoughts on that idea.

SCOWCROFT: I'm not sure we need a blue ribbon commission on what happened. I think we have a pretty good idea in general what happened. And the kinds of questions that you're asking -- whether they were precisely responsible, I think we ought to attend -- start looking forward and fix the things we know need fixing, whether or not they were precisely responsible.

BERGER: I don't know what my answer is to that question, Congressman. There obviously is a tradeoff here between past and future. There is a tradeoff between open and secret. I want to get the answers -- I want to fix things -- whatever is the best way to do that.

LAHOOD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. LaHood.

Mr. Reyes?

REYES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I apologize for not having been here before, but we were finishing up on the House side and I just now got an opportunity to leave there, and wanted to welcome both Mr. Berger and General Scowcroft, who I've had the opportunity to talk extensively.

REYES: General, we served on the civilian oversight for the Air Force Academy. And ironically enough, some of the conversations dealing with today's subject we discussed about the commissions that were talking essentially about not if there was going to be an attack on the homeland, but when it was going to occur.

And, of course, Mr. Berger, on many occasions on Air Force One, traveling with the president, discussing many different issues.

But I'm curious first, General, would you recommend, given you statement that the safest place for a terrorist is in the United States, what are your recommendations to resolve that dilemma that we're facing?

SCOWCROFT: Well, I think in general we ought to look at terrorism this way that aside -- one thing which is to try to penetrate terrorist networks and activities is that any time that terrorists speak -- every time they move -- every time they spend money -- every time they get money there are some traces of those activities. Now, theoretically, it's hard to find them. But theoretically, you can.

There are several problems, though, because in those activities, there are similar activities of millions of other people doing innocent things the same way. How do you distinguish between them?

And also, how, since many of these may be in a foreign language, how do you get them translated quickly enough to be able to act on them?

And in addition, you're dealing with volumes (ph) that are horrendous.

I think we need to look at technology here for a solution to each one of those.

And one I didn't mention, of course, is how you look through all of these without violating the privacy of all those innocent individuals doing it.

I think you can do some things with machines and technology before they get to human beings that help preserve the privacy thing and still let us get more of a handle than we're able to do now.

REYES: One of the big concerns that a lot of us have in Congress are concerns dealing with minorities and racial profiling and those kinds of issues. You know, I was asked early on whether I thought it was a good idea to do racial profiling and fingerprinting individuals coming out of specified countries that the attorney general had commented on. And I said, "Well, if we're going to do that, then perhaps we need to go back and fingerprint everybody in Oklahoma, because of Terry McVeigh."

The point there is that we want to make sure that we don't do exactly what you're talking about, General, and that is trample on the civil rights. Because the first ones trampled would be the minority community. and we're seeing a lot of those kinds of issues surfacing already. And I'm very much concerned in that regard.

And I appreciate your comments along those lines, which lead me to the second point, wouldn't it make sense to be able to, in addition to the official role that we play here, as members of Congress with these hearings and this mandate, to have a commission that would be composed of people that could bring different talents and different expertise to looking at the events of 9/11 to get a different perspective, including the issue of protecting minorities and racial profilings and all of those.

Don't you think that would help give a different perspective that the one that we generally give here?

SCOWCROFT: Well, it might. And of course, we don't know what we don't know. And one of the things for a commission to look at is to find out all of the things we know.

But I would say it would be very valuable at least to have an information technology group skilled enough to try to deal with the problems that you raise. And I suggested a way to deal with them because there may be -- technology may be able to give us the access that we need to the people we want without trampling on anybody else.

REYES: Thank you.

Oh, I'm out of time?

CHAIRMAN: Go ahead.

REYES: The time runs faster over here, Mr. Chairman.

(LAUGHTER)

I'm not -- I'm not used to a galloping pace.

CHAIRMAN: There is a reason for that. I'll explain it to you later.

REYES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I understand that Congressman Chambliss was shorted on his full five minutes. So as we begin the second round, I will call on him. And you'll have a full five minutes now.

REYES: Mr. Chairman, I think I was shorted, too.

(LAUGHTER)

CHAIRMAN: Same clock.

CHAMBLISS: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Berger, during the Clinton administration, was Bin Laden ever offered up to the United States by any country?

BERGER: No.

CHAMBLISS: OK.

BERGER: I have a longer version of that answer, which I provided to Senator Shelby earlier. But the short answer is no.

CHAMBLISS: That's fine.

During the time you acted as national security adviser, did you and your colleagues ever reach the conclusion that offensive action needed to be taken against the Al Qaida, as well as Bin Laden, himself?

BERGER: Yes.

CHAMBLISS: And when was that conclusion reached?

BERGER: From August 1998 -- the first time that the intelligence and law enforcement, particularly the intelligence community was able to say to us, "This is the responsibility of Al Qaida and Bin Laden." From that point on, the president authorized a series of overt and covert actions to try to get Bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

CHAMBLISS: Did you develop any plan to dismantle or disrupt or go after the Al Qaida organization?

BERGER: Yes. And, in fact, the intelligence community worked with intelligence agencies around the world -- '97 on. Al Qaida cells were dismantled and disrupted in about 20 countries. There was not as much receptivity, Congressman, then as there was today. There were some countries which did not take the threat as seriously then as today -- were more protective of civil liberties and ethnic communities than today. But there was an active and aggressive effort by the intelligence community, working with liaison agencies to disrupt and dismantle Al Qaida cells. And that succeeded in more than 20 countries.

CHAMBLISS: In the latter weeks and months of the Clinton administration, was there a plan developed and proposed by you and your colleagues to the Clinton administration with respect to...

BERGER: The Bush administration?

CHAMBLISS: ... (inaudible) of Al Qaida?

BERGER: You mean to the Bush administration, sir?

CHAMBLISS: Well, initially, I'd like to know if it was proposed to President Clinton.

BERGER: We were continually looking at what we were doing -- looking at new techniques -- looking at new steps we could take.

In February of 2000, for example, I sent a memo to President Clinton outlining what we were doing. And he wrote back, "This is not satisfactory." It was particularly related to how do you find this guy? We've got to do more.

And that prompted us to work with the intelligence community and the military on a new technique for detecting Bin Laden. I'm not able to talk about it in this forum.

We tested that in the fall of 2000. Actually, it was very promising as a way of determining where he would be if we had one strand of human intelligence.

So we were continually looking at how we could up the ante.

CHAMBLISS: But did you have a plan that could be executed to disrupt or take out Bin Laden and disrupt the organization?

BERGER: Yes, sir. And we were executing that plan.

CHAMBLISS: All right.

BERGER: Now, the second question you asked -- which comes off of the "Time" magazine story, I think -- was there a plan that we turned over to the Bush administration during the transition? I could address that.

The transition, as you will recall, was condensed by virtue of the election in November. I was very focused on using the time that we had -- I had been on the other side of a transition with General Scowcroft in 1992. But we used that time very efficiently to convey to my successor the most important information -- what was going on and what situations they faced.

Number one among those was terrorism and Al Qaida. And I told that to my successor. She has acknowledged that publicly, so I'm not violating any private conversation. We briefed them fully on what we were doing -- on what else was under consideration and what the threat was. I personally attended part of that briefing to emphasize how important that was.

But there was no war plan that we turned over to the Bush administration during the transition. And the reports of that are just incorrect.

CHAMBLISS: OK. Thank you.

BERGER: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Congressman Chambliss.

And Congressman Goss and I appreciate your maintaining the classified nature of the geography of where that election took place. That shortened the transition period.

(LAUGHTER)

We have now completed the first round of questions.

Now, I would like to ask our two questioners from the House who did not get to ask their questions if they wish to ask a series of questions beyond five minutes. If you could indicate approximately a full 20 minutes or...

BEREUTER: I will not take the full 20 minutes.

CHAIRMAN: Mr. Boswell?

BOSWELL: I will attempt not to take the full 20 minutes.

CHAIRMAN: OK. Congressman Bereuter, then Congressman Boswell.

BEREUTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And, gentlemen, thank you for your statements, your responses and your previous service for the country -- very much appreciated.

I'll try not to cover things that have been asked previously, if I understand what has happened appropriately.

I wonder -- this one is to you, Mr. Berger, in particular, it appears that the FBI was not active in monitoring or penetrating radical Muslim groups.

Is that your understanding? And if you have something of that understanding, why was that the case?

I think that is my general understanding, Congressman. And I think that was pursuant to guidelines and directives that had been drawn up within the FBI in prior years. And perhaps reflected, to some degree, their view that the capability here was not substantial.

BEREUTER: The capability within Al Qaida and related organizations was perhaps not substantial? That might have been their understanding?

BERGER: That, at least, was what was conveyed.

BEREUTER: It was?

BERGER: I think perhaps there were different understandings among different people in the FBI, but that certainly is...

BEREUTER: Is it your view that the FBI did not seriously warn or understand and then not warn that there was a serious terrorism problem that could take place in the United States?

BERGER: You know, I think there certainly were people at the FBI -- Dale Watson (ph), Bev Bryant (ph), the Late John O'Neill (ph) -- who understood this.

BEREUTER: You talked about your weekly or twice a week meetings.

BERGER: They were certainly there and I think they were trying to deal with what I now understand better is as a disconnect between headquarters and the field. So I think they were -- you know, I think as an institution -- and I think Mr. Mueller has acknowledged this -- as an institution, at least as of the time I left, which was the year of 2000, there was another nine months -- there was not a sense that there was -- a sense -- the capability that was here was logistical support -- was not a serious threat and was covered -- was the word that they would use. "We have it covered."

BEREUTER: A question for both of you, then -- does the United States need an MI-5 or some modified MI-5? And can you answer briefly why you think that that would be the case or not the case?

SCOWCROFT: I think that is one solution to the problem. The fundamental problem is that you need either to change the basic laws and responsibilities of the two intelligence agencies, FBI and CIA or you need to build capabilities to match the legal responsibilities. Now, one way to do it in the FBI would be to create an MI-5, which is a domestic intelligence without the law enforcement.

SCOWCROFT: Another way would be to create a separate career path, for example, for the national security division of the FBI, train them, not as law enforcement officers, the way they are now, but as intelligence analysts to do the job. And, there are other ways, but simply to say your primary duty right now has gone from law enforcement to counter-terrorism is not going to produce a revolution inside the system.

BEREUTER: Do you think there has been relatedly -- I'll come to you Mr. Berger, do you think there has been relatedly a disadvantage to an FBI person that moves into counter-espionage or counter- terrorism for a significant part of their career?

SCOWCROFT: Oh, yes, quite definitely. I mean it -- most of my information is anecdotal, but it's from talking to a wide number of people, including high FBI or justice department officials. And, the people who don't make it in law enforcement are shunted off to the...

BEREUTER: And, so...

SCOWCROFT: ... national security division.

BEREUTER: And, so it's possible for someone to be a homesteader in counter-espionage activities, like Mr. Hanssen, and therefore, breech to compartmentation of the...

SCOWCROFT: Well, I'm not sure about the specific cause and effect, but yes.

BEREUTER: All right.

Mr. Berger?

BERGER: Congressman, my inclination would be to fix the FBI. I think there are dedicated, fine people there who care passionately about their country, who take risks every day. And, it seems to me intuitively that are easier to fix and change the mission and deal with the organizational problems of an agency that exists than to do a Greenfield operation someplace out in the Beltway.

So, I guess I see no inherent reason why it would be harder to fix the organizational problems in the FBI, reorient the mission, provide the leadership than it would be to start from scratch. I think the people there are talented, dedicated patriotic people who, if you tell them what their job is, they'll do it.

BEREUTER: Thank you. I asked for your opinion and I appreciate the fact that they're talented and energetic and patriotic. And, it's something for further discussion perhaps.

Looking back at the situation, it seems to me that the intelligence community would desirably be able to tell us the kind of approaches that terrorists might take against our citizens, against our infrastructure in the United States, spelling out the delivery methods, the techniques and so on. And, if you look at the testimony presented yesterday by Eleanor Hill, which constitutes in effect part of our committees' report, the joint committee, just focusing on one type of approach that was used, the use of commercial airliners as flying bombs, we have these items in our chronology. We have of course the Manila plot, which it were -- where part of it was an attempt to break aircraft to crash into the CIA headquarters.

In August '98, the intelligence community obtained information a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive laden plane into a foreign -- from a foreign country into the World Trade Center. September '98, the intelligence community obtained information that Osama bin Laden's next operation would possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport and detonating it.

In the fall of '98 the intelligence community received information asserting bin Laden's plot involving aircraft in New York and Washington, D.C., areas. April of 2001, the intelligence community obtained information from a source with terrorist connections who speculate that bin Laden would be interested in commercial pilots as potential terrorists. So, these are the things that were specifically identified, as some of the things coming in that were geographically not specific, time uncertain, of course.

And, that's just one method of delivering terrorism to this country. But, what surprises, I think the American public and what shocks me is that there seem to have been no place in the federal government, as far as I can find it, that examined the information then about the potential delivery methods of terrorism that said this is how we counteract it, this is how we prevent or avert it. These are the kind of procedures that have to work between the FAA and the FBI or between the FBI and the INS. And, given the fact there doesn't seem to be any agency responsible for that, and indeed it's a multi- agency problem and no one specifically looking at details of how to approach that, I would guess I would have turned to expect it in the National Security Council.

But, now, hopefully, we'll have the Director of Homeland Security and the new department with that very specific responsibility. But, that is all categorized as an intelligence failure. And, it seems to me it goes far beyond that. I would welcome any response of you two gentlemen who have been nation security advisers as to how it is that our government didn't meet its citizens' expectations by having a focused look at how these means of terrorism could be delivered upon our country.

BERGER: Congressman, first of all recognize that there were mountains of intelligence information. Someone said we were drowning in information. They related to a wide variety of possible means from truck bombs and car bombs to assignations and infinite -- or not infinite, but a very wide-ranging variety of modalities.

As I said in my testimony, we did not and I did not -- I do not recall receiving anything that focused specifically on the threat of airlines as weapons. Certainly it was known as one of many possibilities. There was, chaired by the National Security Council, a counter-terrorism security group whose job was to look at cross agency information. It was only as good as what it was given. And, obviously, I've checked, it did not receive the February '98 report, for example, that you refer to. So, there was nothing that made this stand out any more than any other -- another range of threats. But, that's history.

I mean, I do believe, as I said in my testimony, that a Department of Homeland Security, ought to have a fusion cell where all of the agencies are there, all of the raw data is available. The fusion cell is able to task, follow-up. I think that because the volume of threat information, some of it unextracted from its digital form is so great that we have to have a new mechanism for extracting patterns.

BEREUTER: General Scowcroft, do you have a comment?

SCOWCROFT: I agree with most of what Mr. Berger said. I think that we need to look more closely than we have because this is still fairly new, at the best way to go about the intelligence job. Is it to look at all the things that can be done to us? Is it to look at all the people who could do it? Is it a connection of both and how do you do either one? And, we're a long way from -- we're a long way from that.

We have analyzed different parts better than we had the use of aircraft, for example. It's going to be very hard to stay ahead of people anyway. But, I think the specific answer to your question is homeland security is designed to be an answer to it.

I tend now to agree with Senator Shelby and Mr. Berger about the solution, though. I don't think replicating the intelligence community inside homeland security is -- I think it's dodging the problem, rather than solving it. But, a fusion center needs to be done.

BEREUTER: I have one more area of questions. It relates to the military and their past and future use in the war on terrorism.

Mr. Berger and General Scowcroft, both of you, do you feel that there has been any reluctance on the part of the military to have become engaged in the war on terrorism, or do you think that there has been a reluctance on the part of the civilian leadership of the country to employ them? And, I raise a couple of other questions relatedly. Why is it, for example, that we had no military response to the boat attacks, small boat attack on the USS Cole? Does the military -- did our policy structure suggest that the primary focus of dealing with Al Qaeda terrorism was or even is the law enforcement and intelligence community unless we are formally engaged and going into a country like we did in Afghanistan?

BERGER: Congressman, let me ask -- try to answer all three of your questions. We, both the president and myself, went -- spoke to the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on numerous occasions about boots on the ground options in Afghanistan. And, they looked at them I believe seriously. And, their assessment, this is pre-9/11, we don't have Pakistan, we don't have Uzbekistan, we don't have Tajikistan, we don't have any of those neighbors. Their assessment was that given the distance for staging, given the likelihood of detection, given the inability to have forces proximate for backup, that it -- and, most importantly, in the absence of actionable intelligence, that it was likely to fail.

I don't believe that actually was risk aversion. I think that that was not an unreasonable assessment under the circumstances.

BEREUTER: How would you assess the military's attitude about their involvement? Not, in Afghanistan...

BERGER: Well, we're in an entirely new situation now. 9/11 has galvanized the world to go to war, and a full-scale war that I think was not possible, not thinkable before. And, I think the military in the war in Afghanistan has performed very well. But, you're really talking about Special Operations kinds of -- I know what you're -- if one is talking about Special Operations, there are -- it is something we pressed on. It is something that we got, I think, a response to and I don't think the response was necessarily an unreasonable one under the circumstances.

Number two, you asked about the Cole, which happened in October of 2000. When we left office, neither the intelligence community, nor the law enforcement community had reached a judgment about responsibility for the Cole. That judgment was reached sometime between the time we left office and 9/11. So, we, even with 9/11 people said show us the proof. We did not have a judgment from the intelligence community of responsibility on the Cole when we left.

BEREUTER: Are you surprised that there was no military response when it became clear that Al Qaeda was responsible?

BERGER: I'll leave that to the people from the Bush Administration to address whether this was part of a larger plan on their part. I really would prefer to address my own tenure.

On the question of law enforcement versus military, after 9/11 -- after August '98, after we knew we had responsibility for an attack against -- that killed 12 Americans we were not pursuing a law enforcement model. The cruise missiles are not generally conceived of as a law enforcement technique. We were trying to kill bin Laden and his Lieutenants. And, so, I know there's been a lot of discussion of that, the FBI is an investigative arm. They are an instrument for trying to find out what happened. But, we are in a war and it takes the instruments of war to fight that.

BEREUTER: Thank you.

General Scowcroft, would you have any comments on the subjects I just brought up?

SCOWCROFT: Yes, I would. I think that part of the problem is the nature of terrorism and terrorist organizations.

SCOWCROFT: It seems to me your question is basically that of retaliation of going out in an attempt to deter further action and so on. I suggest that that's irrelevant to terrorist organizations. If you know some of them out, they don't care very much, as long as they're there, they'll go on. This is poor man's war. It seems to me we're not going to have maybe anymore situations like Afghanistan where you had a terrorist organization protected by the government and the military operation was really up to the government forces primarily, maybe too much. But, most of it now is going to be terrorists hiding in states where control over all their territories is insecure or where you don't have a fully operating government, Yemen, Somalia, those kinds of things.

And, it's a war where our vaunted military machine is pretty largely ineffective other than some of the intelligence aspects of it because it's not military destruction we're after; it's finding these people. Getting rid of them is easy if you can find them and pin them down.

BERGER: Congressman, can I add one thought.

BEREUTER: Certainly.

BERGER: I don't want to chew down your down, but it has occurred to me since 9/11 that we have had since the beginning of the cold war essentially a threat based approach to national security. We built NORAD so we could have detection, so that we could respond. And, part of what this committee is doing is trying to figure out how we get better intelligence so we can have threat, so that we can have a warning. But, with this new enemy, I think we have to think about not only threat-based protection, but vulnerability based protection. We have to look at each of these systems and see where the vulnerabilities are because we will not always have warning with this kind of enemy. We started to do that by looking at -- focusing on critical infrastructure in the '90s. But, I think the real task of the Department of Homeland Security and all of us is to look, beef up our ability, obviously to get them, fight offense, and get warning, but recognize that we also have to look at all of our systems, our critical systems from a vulnerability point of view whether that's companies or government and have a much higher threshold of security in a vulnerability sense.

BEREUTER: Thank you, gentlemen. I had planned to yield my time, but I have none left. So...

GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Congressman.

I would just like to comment on one aside that you made, which was the characterization of the staff report that we started yesterday's hearings with. It is not our characterization of these staff reports as being part of or the final report. They are rather means of putting the committee into a position that it can have an overview as to major blocks of events and activities that led up to September 11 and then to have that fleshed out by the kind of commentary that we've had today from our excellent witnesses. It will then be our responsibility to prepare the final report with that as one source of that beginning preparation, but not a part of the final report.

Mr. Boswell?

BOSWELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and remembering you're urging me to be short.

GRAHAM: Asking.

BOSWELL: Asking. I took that as urging. This panel has been good.

General, Mr. Berger, you bring a lot of expertise and a lot of expertise of what we need to talk about and experience, and we appreciate it very much.

I've got a couple things that I would like for you to comment on. I'll start off with you, Mr. Berger. During your tenure with -- was the NSC worried about the nightmare described in Mr. Lake's book of terrorists' access to weapons of mass destruction, in particular were you concerned about loose nukes falling...

BERGER: Yes, sir.

BOSWELL: ... into their hands and would you comment about it?

BERGER: This was a very serious concern. In fact in 1999 the president gave a speech to the National Academy of Sciences talking about this as the great looming danger. And, he asked the Congress for $1.4 billion, most of which you appropriated, for money that provided for research, vaccines, we had the Cipro stockpiles because we got started then. We started to train first responders. Obviously, much more needs to be done, much more needed to be done. But, this was a particular preoccupation of the president. And, if you read Judy Miller's very good book called Germs, the New York Times reporter hardly a natural fan of the Clinton Administration. I think she indicates that President Clinton really was very focused on this. We've got a long way to go. And, we probably were focused more on the weapons of mass destruction scenario than the airport scenario. We built a airport security system in the '70s to stop hijackings. It by and large stopped hijacking. The only hijacking that took place in the '90s before 9/11, as far as I know, was a disgruntled FedEx pilot who took a FedEx plan in Memphis and flew it to San Jose.

So, in fact, it appears that that airport security system had atrophied more than the people running it had known. But, we were very much focused on the WMD threats.

BOSWELL: I appreciate that. Some have criticized the administration missile strikes against bin Laden in '98 is ineffective and inadequate. And, could you comment, why didn't the Clinton Administration in 2000 or 2001 launch a combined military effort, something like what we've done after September 11?

BERGER: Congressman, I don't think that that was feasible before 9/11. Let's remember that in all the Clinton administration 67 Americans had been killed by terrorists. And, that's 67 far too many, 12 in Africa; but it's an order of magnitude different than what happened to us in 9/11. I don't think there was anybody up here calling for an invasion of Afghanistan. I don't think there's anybody in the press calling for an invasion of Afghanistan. I just don't think that was something we would have had diplomatic support. We would not have had basing support. And, so, I don't the kind of full- scale war that we've seen since 9/11 was feasible, unfortunately, before that.

BOSWELL: I would like for both of you to comment, if you would, on just based on your experience, both of you, years around the White House, how difficult will it be for the Bush Administration to maintain the focus and urgency of the war on terrorism with our allies, the American people and with government and personnel, many of whom were -- it seems to me are pretty well stretched at this point?

General, you want to go first? You've been inspiring troops for a long time.

SCOWCROFT: It is -- it'll be very difficult. It'll be especially difficult if there are no more terrorist acts for a while because you can already see us slipping back into business as normal. I think part of the job of any president is to keep the people motivated, keep them stirred up, keep the issues before them. And, I think so far the president has done a good job, but the difficulty of keeping this focused will increase the more time that passes without any additional attacks.

BOSWELL: Well, understandably so, the efforts on the war on terrorism is very, very important, no question about it. We don't -- none of us disagree on that. But, there are some pressures from across the country to get back on some of the domestic issues and justly so. So, will that...

SCOWCROFT: Well, you know, I think we ought to be able to walk and chew gum...

BOSWELL: And, ride a bicycle.

SCOWCROFT: ... and ride a bicycle, maybe. But, keeping attention on terrorism is -- first of all, the president has declared it the number one mission...

BOSWELL: Yes.

SCOWCROFT: ... of the country. Secondly, it's not glamorous. You can't read the reports like you could in World War II of how the battle line changed over the last 24 hours and so on. There were lots of things, lots of times when you'll be absolutely quiet and then as we have in the last few days, we've caught a few people, and there'll be an upsurge. But, this is not a war that the press will be glued to to keep the American people up for it. And, so the administration will have to serve that role.

BERGER: Congressman, if I could just add one thing. I think the president is right in saying rather periodically we are going to be attacked again. I think Secretary Rumsfeld's right. I support Secretary Ridge in doing the same thing. It's always a very difficult balance, how do you warn without creating anxiety? How do you tell people to be alert and go shopping? But, the fact of the matter is, Congressman, we are going to be hit again. And, it is something the American people do have to be reminded up continually so that they will demand that these problems get addressed. That we learn from what happened, that they are not inert in their daily lives, but they're alert in their daily lives. So, I think the president's doing the right thing by saying from time to time, we're going to be attacked again, that is true. And, that's part of maintaining the concentration and focus of the American people. And, we ought not, in my judgment, to be dismissing that as alarmism.

BOSWELL: Thank you.

Moving here to another point, General Scowcroft, through your long career you've witnessed a number of strategic surprises that result in dramatic shifts in the international relations environment, the rapid fall of the Soviet block, the end of the Cold War in '89, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, discoveries in '91 about his development of mass destruction weapons and others.

Is there, in your mind, or do you have -- give us your thoughts, is there some common characteristic to the way our government does intelligence strategic analysis that leads us to missing dramatic paradigm shifts such as these?

SCOWCROFT: That's a really tough question to answer. I don't know. I'm not aware of it. One of the real problems is that if you start to far out and anticipate contingencies and bring those to the decision makers, they say don't bother me with something 10 years, I've got something 10 minutes away. It's very hard -- or he'll say well, that's a possibility, but I've got 10 others that are just as likely. It's very hard to do long-range planning. And, I've been involved in it, both in the military and the NSC, which supposedly is supposed to do that. It's incredibly hard to do it and integrate it into a government which primary job is putting out fires as a practical matter.

BERGER: Congressman, let me just add one perspective on this. I think there's information and there's context. And, I think often the problem is the failure to understand the context, which is why I said in my remarks how important it is to build up the analytical side, as well as the collection side and to bring outside experts in. Why did we not see the Holocaust coming when you can look back now and see plenty of signs? Why did we not see the Khmer Rouge coming in Cambodia even though there were telltale signs? Why did we not see in the '80s Saddam likely to invade his neighbor after what he had done to the Kurds? Why did we not see -- whey did the greatest experts on Yugoslavia not understand that the breakup of Yugoslavia would lead to rabid nationalism and wars against humanity?

Those were only partly failures in information. There were generally failures of understanding and context and I think we always have to wrap the question of information, finding that needle in the haystack with understanding the haystack.

BOSWELL: Do you have suggestions of how we might...

BERGER: Yes, I think...

BOSWELL: ... take a stab at it.

BERGER: ... there -- I think we -- we live in a world, Congressman, in which expertise increasingly does not exist in the government. It's a very complicated world and the five people who know Afghanistan the best or Sierra Leone the best are probably located either in Academia in think tanks or in companies, not to devalue the people in the government. So, we have to find a way, in my judgment to integrate the expertise that exists on the outside with the information that exists on the inside. I suggested some kind of -- we tried this with the National Intelligence Council once under Joe Nye (ph), I think it was a good experiment.

We ought to, in my judgment, look at some sort of a quasi- official institute where top level academics, top-level businessmen, can give two years, not necessarily working for the CIA, which continues to be a bit of a taint going back to academia, but can be someplace where they have access to classified information. They have access to our best people, our best people have access to them and we're able to put the consequences of the footprint we left in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War in a better context.

BOSWELL: Thank you.

General, I am informed that in the early '90s, when intelligence began to make clearer the threat of nuclear proliferation while you were at the White House, you once considered creating a non- proliferation agency to focus on addressing the threat. Can you share with us your thinking behind considering this and other proposals that you might have had to deal with this high priority situation?

SCOWCROFT: Yes, at one time as the Cold War turned off, if you will, the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, first of their extent proliferation within the old Soviet Union and therefore into some of the successor states and the general issue became an important one. And, at one time, as we were looking at the arms control and disarmament agency, which seemed no longer to serve a purpose for so large an agency over an issue which was declining in importance, we looked at the possibility of turning that into a non- proliferation agency.

I happen to think it was a pretty good idea, but some of my more frugal colleagues thought it was better to eliminate an agency and non-proliferation was everybody's business and that putting it in one agency would be most likely to leave the other agencies not to pay any attention to it because it wasn't their job anymore and non- proliferation was everybody's job.

BOSWELL: I think the last the question, Mr. Chairman, to Mr. Berger that a lot of senior policymakers complain that while they're in office the relentless focus on the inbox who need to respond to short-term crisis, which you've, I think, touched on there just a moment ago, the expense of having time for long-term strategic thinking, is it true? And, what can we do about it? What would be a role that we could play?

BERGER: Well, I think it's unquestionably true, congressman, that the urgent tends to drive out the important. I think that's probably as true for your day as it is for the day of a policy maker in the executive branch, your CEO of the company. I don't have a magical solution except to understand that if you don't come to work everyday with the idea what are the three things you want to get done and then go home if you got one of them done feeling pretty good and two of them are still left undone, and then you'll get to the inbox, I don't think you'll ever overcome the problem. I think you've identified the very problem I think that clearly exists.

BOSWELL: So, was there time to conclude that the Al Qaeda was this high priority and so on? Did you have time to -- or just was you constantly badgered with all the other things going on?

BERGER: Congressman, there was no question in my mind. This is a problem I woke up at night about. We were focused on this. I wish we could have gotten bin Laden. But, it was not because it was not a priority, sir.

BOSWELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for bringing these witnesses to us today.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

BOSWELL: I appreciate it very much.

And, I want to personally thank each of you for your contribution to our country. Thank you.

GRAHAM: Thank you very much, Mr. Boswell. We have committed to our witnesses who've been extremely generous, obviously, in the amount of time that they took in thoughtfully preparing the remarks that they've given and now responding to our questions. We committed that at 5:00 we would call this to an end.

What I'd like to suggest is maybe if the remaining -- in the remaining 13 minutes, if we could restrict ourselves to one final question and then at 5:00 we will adjourn.

GOSS: Mr. Chairman, is that final person -- question per person?

GRAHAM: One final question per person.

And, I will -- this relates to a commitment I have to some of your colleagues, senator.

GOSS: Yes.

GOSS: The Chairman's going to ask the first question...

GRAHAM: I'm going to ask the first question and...

GOSS: ... because he knows it might...

GRAHAM: ... I will try...

GOSS: ... take 13 minutes.

GRAHAM: ... to -- I'll try to ask a precise question and it'll be to General Scowcroft and maybe he can give a precise answer. I know that you've been heading up the external review of the intelligence community and that until the president makes some decisions you're constrained in terms of what you can say. But, in our morning panel we did have considerable discussion about the proposal to establish within the Department of Defense an Undersecretary for Intelligence. Could you comment on that in terms of what, from your review of the structure and architecture of the intelligence community that might mean?

SCOWCROFT: Well, let me just say that while the things I have read about it make it look like a housekeeping measure within the Defense Department. I really think that it ought to be viewed in the light of the structural discussions that are going on, whether it's the report of my group and there are many others going on because, it will have profound implications for the intelligence community as a whole. And, it seems to me to make a one single step unassociated with all the other things that your committees are now deliberating would be a mistake because then you either predetermine the direction of the structure or you have to change it to go back again.

So, I would urge, as a first step, that no decision be made on anything which it so facto will affect the entire community.

GRAHAM: Thank you, General.

Congressman Goss?

GOSS: Thank you very much for your testimony and for taking the time to be here and it's a pleasure to see you both and we appreciate the assistance. It's hard to restrict ourselves to one question to you because you have so much to offer us on your views on the fixes that we need and I appreciate, Mr. Berger, the points, seven points that you've outlined in your testimony and I know that General Scowcroft has other points for the structure of the community as well, which we anxiously look forward to reading.

My question is this for both of you, I believe that the Aspen Brown Commission identified a problem that still exists in the community which is extremely important and that is the relationship between the President of the United States and the community. Is there anything that we in Congress can do to ensure that that is always functioning in a way that gets the best out of the community to serve the president and the country?

BERGER: Well, I think that -- I guess, Mr. Chairman, I would say in my own view, if we had a DCI who was head of the community and not head of the -- not only head of 15 percent of the community, but was able to integrate all of these priorities, working with his colleagues, I think automatically that would change the nature of the relationship.

GOSS: Mr. Scowcroft?

SCOWCROFT: I don't disagree with that.

GOSS: You know I'm so glad to hear that we're in agreement on that point.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

GRAHAM: Senator Shelby?

SHELBY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to try to have one question in several parts I hope.

We were talking about, Mr. Berger, earlier a group, was this the so-called White House working group on terrorism? You said the FBI met two or three times a week, was that...

BERGER: It was called the Counter-terrorism Security Group.

SHELBY: OK, the counter -- sir?

BERGER: The Counter-terrorism Security Group, sir.

SHELBY: OK. And, did they meet about three times a week more or less?

BERGER: Sometimes every day, as much as necessary.

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: There also were meetings at the deputy level, probably every two weeks.

SHELBY: Sure.

BERGER: And, at the principal level probably...

SHELBY: Did you go to some of these meetings?

BERGER: Well, the principals met on terrorism during our years frequently.

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: The last two years probably once a week or every two weeks.

SHELBY: OK. Did you ever hear or know of the group talking about the possibility of using -- of terrorists using airplanes in some ways as weapons?

BERGER: You would have to ask Mr. Clark (ph).

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: My understanding is...

SHELBY: He headed this group did he not?

BERGER: Excuse me? Yes, he did.

SHELBY: OK.

BERGER: I don't know that that issue was brought to that group with clarity.

SHELBY: OK. Do you know whether or not the Counter-terrorism Center over at Langley ever discussed or considered or gained the possibility that terrorists would or could use airplanes as weapons, considering the fact that they were aware of the Philippine situation in '95? The French deal dealing with the Eiffel Tower and a lot of other threats dealing with aircraft?

BERGER: I can't answer that question.

SHELBY: I'd have to go to there -- go to that group. Do you know, General, you were -- I know you were...

SCOWCROFT: No.

SHELBY: I know you were not there then. OK. OK.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GRAHAM: Thank you, senator.

The next speakers will be Congresswoman Pelosi, Senator DeWine, Ms. Harman, Mr. Roemer, Mr. Reyes and then Senator Edwards. OK.

PELOSI: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. So many questions, so little time.

I want to join our distinguished chairman and my colleagues in thanking you for your testimony today and for your very distinguished service, both of you, to our country. It really was a very valuable presentation that you both made and we appreciate it very much.

I have so many questions and this is the one I'm going to ask because I think it's a major concern to the American people. Following September 11 one of the biggest fears that we had was of a use of some radioactive material or some weapons of mass destruction, active bioterrorism, et cetera, that would, as horrible as September 11 was and it has scarred our souls forever, would have many more deaths even than that. In addition to that, stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a pillar of our foreign policy. It's an overarching issue in terms of a presidential priority to stop it. But, when we go to address the issue, we're usually looking at the end user rather than the source and from your experience can you tell me why? Certainly the capacity that some countries have in the Persian Gulf area and more than one is not indigenous to them, nor is a delivery system indigenous. They had to get them someplace.

Why is it that as a matter of policy if this is a pillar of our foreign policy and it is a major priority for the President of the United States that we do not -- we're not more serious as a country in stopping the proliferation at the source rather than always dealing with it at the end user?

SCOWCROFT: Well, Congresswoman Pelosi, I'm not sure I accept the premise. I think we have taken serious steps against possible proliferation, the Nunn-Lugar legislation, I think it's inadequately funded, but it is designed precisely for that question and that is by all odds the largest source of potential proliferation in the world. All others are dwarfed by it.

One of the other major proliferators is North Korea. And, it's a proliferation partly of know how and partly of components and so on. We haven't -- we have tried to stop that in a variety of ways. The same with some Chinese exports. So, I don't think -- I know we're focused on a particular potential user now, but I think we have tried to control proliferation at the source. I think it has been inadequately funded.

PELOSI: If I just may say that, of course, Nunn-Lugar is -- God bless Nunn, Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar who is not here right now, because we are all deeply in their debt. And that is a, as you said, the most significant and discrete area of the most proliferate technology, as well as know-how.

PELOSI: Sandy -- excuse me...

BERGER: I share your concern about this priority. I do think some progress has been made, not nearly enough. When the non- proliferation treaty was signed in 1975 the expectation was at the time there would be 30 nuclear nations in 20 years. There are eight, three putative nuclear nations. But, I believe, absolutely agree more has to be done. Number one, for purposes of this committee I think there is an active role that covert action can play on this agenda. I will say no more. But, we can try to stop things from moving from place A to place B. I agree on Nunn-Lugar and I suppose some of us will disagree. I happen to believe that international regimes like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Biological Weapons Convention, strengthen the international norm. They're not perfect, but that means when states are outside that norm it is easier as in the case with Iraq to rally the world, to see that they're out of compliance with the international norm.

So, I do believe that international regimes are useful.

PELOSI: Thank you very much to both of you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GRAHAM: Thank you. We have now less than two minutes left.

Senator DeWine?

DEWINE: Let me just thank both of you very much for your testimony and I wholeheartedly agree with your comment. This is the opportunity for this country to make fundamental reforms in intelligence. It's interesting on Page 7, I won't read it, but Page 7 of Anthony Lake's testimony, he also talks about reform. I'd ask my colleagues to take a look at that. I have -- let me just, though, for a moment, play the devil's advocate because I want to touch on a couple of issues that will be questions I think should be asked.

One, same question, but one, Mr. Berger, how do you make sure that DCI under your plan is not a czar, but a little higher, but really with no authority, less authority than he has under the system today, once you take the CIA out.

And, second, Mr. Scowcroft, how do you deal with the military's ability to control their fear that they're going to loss the ability to control their assets in time of war?

BERGER: I'll answer my...

DEWINE: If you follow your -- that plan?

BERGER: Yes, my proposal, senator, and I think I said the committee should consider. I mean this is a complicated subject; the DCI would have responsibility, primary responsibility in budgets, resources, priorities. He would not own these individual agencies. They'd still be run by the Defense Department and by other agencies. There might be some consolidation that's possible. But, I think that would help in prioritizing and particularly putting a higher priority on the number one we face, which is the war against terrorism.

DEWINE: Mr. Scowcroft?

SCOWCROFT: Senator, I can't answer your question expressively, but there are -- it is a valid concern, the military getting what they need. And, there are ways to provide for that in a way that doesn't require them to own the assets.

DEWINE: Thank you very much.

GRAHAM: Thank you, senator.

And, we are now at the 5:00 hour. The record will remain open through the end of business on Monday, so any of those who did not get to ask the questions that they wished to ask, if they would submit them in writing, we will forward them to the person that to whom you would like them directed.

I wish to take this opportunity on behalf of the joint committee to thank, again, General Scowcroft and Mr. Berger for their excellent presentations. I recognize the special effort that both of you extended to do this for which I am personally and the members of the committee...

: Mr. Chairman, I'm told by my friend here that we have probably a few more minutes if Congressman Roemer and Congresswoman Harman would like to ask a question.

GRAHAM: There's a man of truly generous heart.

General, can you stay a few more minutes?

BERGER: There's another meeting of senators that I'm supposed to be at, but five minutes.

GRAHAM: All right.

Then the next would be -- I still -- everything I just said still counts.

BERGER: I thought maybe you'd say it again if I...

GRAHAM: Ms. Harman?

HARMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The witnesses are old friends of mine and I've just decided I like them a lot better than I like you. Just a joke, Mr. Chairman. I meant that...

GRAHAM: I am deeply wounded and offended.

HARMAN: I appreciate their generosity and I want to thank them for their prior service to our country and for their future service. I think it would be very valuable if they served our country in the future too because they are so highly skilled.

I want to ask another question about risk aversion.

GRAHAM: Ms. Harman, again...

HARMAN: One question.

GRAHAM: ... one, we're still going to be the one question rule.

HARMAN: Yes, I know. Risk aversion, Mr. Bereuter was asking about it. My question is given the fact that on 9/11 the audience changed, given the fact that these committees have criticized the 1995 guidelines on recruitment of human spies and they have been changed, given the fact that I think the whole country is focused on this now, do you feel that our intelligence community, the 14 agencies in our intelligence community, have finally overcome what one could call risk aversion and are aggressively in every way possible going after the terrorist targets?

BERGER: No. We can always do better. I think the whole country is focused, obviously, much more intensely than they were before 9/11.

HARMAN: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GRAHAM: Thank you, Ms. Harman.

Mr. Roemer?

ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Nice to see you both, General, a pleasure, Sandy, great to have you and thank you for all your service to the Clinton administration. My question is not going -- my one question that I have to ask here is not going to be knowing you're a big Oriole fan, Mr. Berger, about that, it's going to be about General Scowcroft has spearheaded an effort to try to make some institutional changes in the way the CIA has responsibility and jurisdiction for budgets and issues and so forth. This joint committee will probably make some sweeping institutional recommendations at some point when they finish their job.

I guess my question is -- well, let me just underscore one more point, the Department of Defense has now recommended an Undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, which may run counter to -- or may run in sync with what you recommend. I don't know. What do you think about the creation of that undersecretary position, both of you? And, when might your recommendations be available to the committee for review?

SCOWCROFT: I think that a recommendation, such as the one that Secretary Rumsfeld made ought to be considered in the light of overall structural considerations and should not be acted on in the absence of the comprehensive review that is now going on.

I can't answer the second question.

BERGER: I agree.

GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Roemer.

Mr. Reyes?

REYES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one, what I hope is a quick question, and I also wanted to thank you, both you gentlemen, for your service to the country.

And, my question is, do you think that there is sufficient diversity in the intelligence community to address the current challenge as we see it against this country?

SCOWCROFT: I don't know that I can answer that question. I think...

BERGER: I think we need a lot more people, congressman, who are from the countries of concern here, whose heritage is Arab and Islamic, in particular, who speak the language, who are able to function with sophistication in our societies.

SCOWCROFT: And, primarily whatever they come from, we need to get inside the ethos of different countries and how they will react to different kinds of stimuli and so on and so forth. We're not very good at that here and I think diversity, as you suggest, would help that problem a lot.

REYES: OK.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GRAHAM: Good. Thank you, Mr. Reyes.

And, Senator Edwards?

EDWARDS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, thank you to the witnesses very much for being here. I've been following this hearing closely during the course of the day and thank you both for what you've done for our country. Obviously the question I had has been asked at least twice so far. So, I do have a quick anecdote I want to tell before I yield to Mike.

When I went on this committee originally, which was about a year and a half ago, the first thing I did was to call Sandy Berger and ask him to come meet with me, and I don't know if he remembers this meeting. But, he came and met with me and this was long before 9/11 and he was sitting on my sofa and we were talking and I said I'm going on this committee, what are the things I need to be concerned about? And, of course, the press and the focus at that point was largely on national missile defense and the president's proposal. And, Mr. Berger's response was two things are going to dominate us for at least the next decade. The first is the threat of terrorism and the second is weapons of mass destruction.

Given what's happened on 9/11 and the ongoing national debate now about Iraq, it's a clear indication of you being on the front edge of what we need to be focused on and what needed to be done. I'm confident if you were saying that to me, I'm not the only person you were saying it to and I think it was an extraordinary prediction of where we would be.

Thank you for what you've done and for all the help you've given me and others in my position.

BERGER: Thank you.

REYES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GRAHAM: Thank you, Senator.

Any concluding comments, if not, again, thank you for your very generous and helpful participation.

SCOWCROFT: Thank you both, Mr. Chairmen.

GRAHAM: The hearing is adjourned.

END

NOTES:
[????] - Indicates Speaker Unknown
[--] - Indicates could not make out what was being said.[off mike] - Indicates could not make out what was being said.

 

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