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[Senate Hearing 107-597]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-597
CURRENT AND PROJECTED NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
of the
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
CURRENT AND PROJECTED NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS
TO THE UNITED STATES
__________
FEBRUARY 6, 2002
U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
81-064 WASHINGTON : 2002
___________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
BOB GRAHAM, Florida, Chairman
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama, Vice Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan JON KYL, Arizona
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
Virginia ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
RON WYDEN, Oregon MIKE DeWINE, Ohio
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee
EVAN BAYH, Indiana RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
Thomas A. Daschle, South Dakota, Ex Officio
Trent Lott, Mississippi, Ex Officio
------
Alfred Cumming, Staff Director
Bill Duhnke, Minority Staff Director
Kathleen P. McGhee, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held in Washington, DC, February 6, 2002................. 1
Statement of:
Ford, Hon. Carl W. Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for
Intelligence and Research.................................. 28
Tenet, Hon. George J., Director of Central Intelligence,
Central Intelligence Agency................................ 5
Watson, Dale L., Executive Assistant Director,
Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, Federal Bureau of
Investigation.............................................. 88
Wilson, Vice Admiral Thomas R., Director, Defense
Intelligence Agency........................................ 57
Supplemental Materials
Letter to Hon. George J. Tenet transmitting Questions for the
Record..................................................... 163
Letter to Hon. Carl W. Ford, Jr. transmitting Questions for
the Record................................................. 232
Letter to Hon. Robert Mueller, transmitting Questions for the
Record..................................................... 331
Letter to Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson transmitting Questions
for the Record............................................. 294
Response to QFRs from CIA.................................... 174
Response to QFRs from DIA.................................... 299
Response to QFRs from State.................................. 239
Response to QFRs from FBI.................................... 335
THE WORLDWIDE THREAT
----------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Select Committee on Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, the Honorable Bob
Graham (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Committee Members Present: Senators Graham, Rockefeller,
Wyden, Bayh, Edwards, Shelby, Kyl, Roberts, and DeWine.
Chairman Graham. I call the meeting to order.
For several years, this Committee has had a practice of
commencing its annual oversight of the United States
intelligence community by holding a public hearing to present
to the American people and our Committee members the
intelligence community's assessment of the current and
projected national security threats to the United States.
There is nothing more important to our national security
than timely and accurate intelligence. Intelligence forms the
foundation of our foreign policy and provides the basis of our
nation's defense planning, strategy, and supports our
warfighters.
The intelligence community is our nation's early-warning
system against threats to the lives and property of United
States citizens and residents here and around the world. The
importance of this mission became particularly apparent on
September 11 when our nation's greatest strengths--our freedom,
our openness--were successfully exploited by an elusive global
network of determined zealots. The terrorist threat has been on
the intelligence community's radar screen for years. Indeed, it
was almost exactly a year ago today, on February 7th of 2001,
when Director George Tenet testified at this same open session.
He stated, and I quote, ``Usama bin Ladin and his global
network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate
and serious threat. His organization is continuing to place
emphasis on developing surrogates to carry out attacks in an
effort to avoid detection, blame and retaliation. As a result,
it is often difficult to attribute terrorist incidents to his
group, the al-Qa'ida.''
While the intelligence community has been aware of the
great threat posed by bin Laden and his terrorist organization,
it is a priority of this Committee to ascertain what more the
intelligence community could have done to avert the September
11 tragedy. We must identify any systemic shortcomings in our
intelligence community and fix those as soon as possible. We
owe it to the American people to do all that we can to prevent
a recurrence of September 11.
These and other issues will be explored with our witnesses
in a closed hearing this afternoon and for the remainder of
this session of Congress. I want to thank our witnesses who are
appearing here today. We have with us Mr. George Tenet,
Director of Central Intelligence; Mr. Carl Ford, Assistant
Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research; Vice Admiral
Thomas Wilson, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; and
Mr. Dale Watson, Executive Assistant Director for
Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence.
In order to optimize the time for questions of our
witnesses, immediately after Vice Chairman Senator Shelby makes
his opening statement, we will ask Director Tenet to present
his testimony. We will ask our other witnesses to submit their
full statements for the record. For our question-and-answer
period, we will observe the normal Committee rule of first
arrival, first to question. The questions will be limited to
five minutes per round.
Vice Chairman Shelby.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We held our
last open hearing on national security threats one year ago
tomorrow, as Senator Graham has alluded to. Director Tenet, on
that day, you testified here that first and foremost among the
threats to the U.S. was the threat posed by international
terrorism, and specifically by Usama bin Ladin's global
terrorist network.
We all agreed with you when you said, and I quote, ``The
highest priority for our intelligence community must invariably
be on those things that threaten the lives of Americans or the
physical security of the United States.''
To fight this terrorist threat, you assured us then, and I
quote again, ``The intelligence community has designed a robust
counterterrorism program that has preempted, disrupted and
defeated international terrorists and their activities.'' In
fact, you told us then, ``In most instances, we've kept
terrorists off-balance, forcing them to worry about their own
security and degrading their ability to plan and to conduct
operations.''
Seven months after your testimony, in an attack that
apparently had been years in the planning, Usama bin Ladin's
terrorists killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans in less than
one hour. As you know, the U.S. has an intelligence community
today and a Director of Central Intelligence in large part
because of the Pearl Harbor disaster of December 7th, 1941. The
fear of another Pearl Harbor provided the impetus for our
establishment of a national-level intelligence bureaucracy.
This system was created so that America would never have to
face another devastating surprise attack.
That second devastating surprise attack came on
September11th, and as I said, it killed more Americans than did the
Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. All of us, I think, owe the American
people an explanation as to why our intelligence community failed to
provide adequate warning of such a terrorist attack on our soil. After
all, as Director Tenet has stated, the Director of Central Intelligence
is hired not to observe and to comment but to warn and to protect.
In the very near future, this Committee will join with the
House Intelligence Committee in an effort to provide an
explanation to the American people. Once we determine why we
were caught completely by surprise, I believe we must then work
together to ensure that there is no third Pearl Harbor.
I'm pleased that the Director of Central Intelligence,
George Tenet, and his colleagues have joined us today. These
threat hearings are important, because understanding what the
threats are is the first step toward helping our intelligence
community meet the challenge of defending against them.
Mr. Chairman, these hearings also give the respective
leaders within the intelligence community an opportunity to
speak directly to the American people. While the bulk of the
activities of the intelligence community are secret, there is a
great deal we can and I think we should discuss in a public
forum, as you called for today.
With that in mind, I ask each of our witnesses to address
members' questions to the greatest extent possible in this open
setting. Not long ago, our intelligence community faced a
single clear threat--the Soviet Union and its communist
allies--against which it could devote most of its resources and
attention.
With the end of the Cold War, the world situation facing
our intelligence agencies underwent a fundamental change. Until
that point, murky transnational threats had been only sideshows
to the main event of the East-versus-West strategic rivalry.
Today, however, coping with asymmetric transnational challenges
such as terrorism has become the most important duty of our
intelligence community.
To say the least, the post-Cold War period has been one of
difficult transition. Even before September 11, we had a rocky
history of intelligence failures--among them, the bombing of
Khobar Towers, the Indian nuclear test, the bombing of our East
African embassies, the first attack on the World Trade Center
buildings, and the attack upon the USS COLE.
Examined individually, each of these failures, tragic in
their own way, may not suggest a continuing or systemic
problem. But, however, taken as a whole and culminating with
the events of September 11, they present a disturbing series of
intelligence shortfalls that I believe expose some serious
problems in the structure of and approaches taken by our
intelligence community.
We will have many opportunities in the very near future to
discuss the structural and organizational defects inherent in
our intelligence community. But for today, we should remember
that understanding the threat is the first step along a road
that must lead to improvements in how our nation confronts
these threats.
It has become apparent that international terrorism now
poses the most significant threat to our national security and
our interests at home and abroad. I will be interested to hear
what our intelligence agencies believe such threats will look
like in the future.
Just as militaries can face defeat if they keep trying to
fight the last war, so can intelligence agencies suffer
terrible strategic surprise if they spend their time trying to
meet the last threat or if they try to meet new threats with
the mindset, tactics and obsolete mythologies of the past.
The U.S. clearly faces unprecedented dangers today, and we
will surely face new ones tomorrow. I look forward to hearing
from our witnesses today as we discuss these threats and how we
can work together to defeat them in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman.
As indicated previously, we will now receive the testimony
from Director Tenet. We'll ask for the other witnesses to
submit their statements, and then we will proceed to questions.
Director Tenet.
[The prepared statements of Mr. Tenet, Mr. Ford, Admiral
Wilson, and Dale Watson follow:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE GEORGE J. TENET, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE, ACCOMPANIED BY THE HONORABLE CARL FORD, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH; VICE ADMIRAL
THOMAS R. WILSON, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY; AND
DALE L. WATSON, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, COUNTERTERRORISM
AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Director Tenet. Mr. Chairman, I appear before you this year
under circumstances that are extraordinary and historic for
reasons I need not recount. Never before has the subject of
this annual threat briefing had more immediate resonance. Never
before have the dangers been more clear or more present.
September 11 brought together and brought home literally
several vital threats to the United States and its interests
that we have long been aware of. It is the convergence of these
threats that I want to emphasize with you today: The connection
between terrorists and other enemies of this country; the
weapons of mass destruction they seek to use against us; and
the social, economic and political tensions across the world
that they exploit in mobilizing their followers.
September 11 demonstrated the dangers that arise when these
threats converge and remind us that we overlook, at our own
peril, the impact of crises in remote parts of the world. This
convergence of threats has created a world I will present to
you today, a world in which dangers exist not only in those
places we have most often focused our attention, but also in
other areas that demand it; in places like Somalia, where the
absence of a national government has created an environment in
which groups sympathetic to al-Qa'ida have offered terrorists
an operational base and potential safe haven; in places like
Indonesia, where political instability, separatist and ethnic
tensions and protracted violence are hampering economic
recovery and fueling Islamic extremism; in places like
Colombia, where leftist insurgents who make much of their money
from drug trafficking are escalating their assault on the
government, further undermining economic prospects and fueling
a cycle of violence; and finally, Mr. Chairman, in places like
Connecticut, where the death of a 94-year-old woman in her own
home of anthrax poisoning can arouse our worst fears about what
our enemies might try to do to us.
These threats demand our utmost response. The United States
has clearly demonstrated since September 11 that it is up to
the challenge. But make no mistake: Despite the battles we have
won in Afghanistan, we remain a nation at war. Last year I told
you that Usama bin Ladin and the al-Qa'ida network were the
most immediate and serious threat this country faced. This
remains true, despite the progress we have made in Afghanistan
and in disrupting the network elsewhere.
We assess that al-Qa'ida and other terrorist groups will
continue to plan to attack this country and its interests
abroad. Their modus operandi is to continue to have multiple
attack plans in the works simultaneously and to have al-Qa'ida
cells in place to conduct them.
We know that the terrorists have considered attacks in the
U.S. against high-profile government or private facilities,
famous landmarks and U.S. infrastructure nodes such as
airports, bridges, harbors and dams. High-profile events such
as the Olympics or last weekend's Super Bowl also fit the
terrorists' interests in striking another blow within the
United States that would command worldwide media attention.
Al-Qa'ida also has plans to strike against U.S. and allied
interests in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast
Asia. American diplomatic and military installations are at
high risk, especially in East Africa, Israel, Saudi Arabia and
Turkey. Operations against U.S. targets could be launched by
al-Qa'ida cells already in place in major cities in Europe and
the Middle East. Al-Qa'ida can also exploit its presence or
connections to other groups in such countries as Somalia,
Yemen, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Although the September 11 attacks suggest that al-Qa'ida
and other terrorists will continue to use conventional weapons,
one of our highest concerns is their stated readiness to
attempt unconventional attacks against us. As early as 1998,
bin Ladin publicly declared that acquiring unconventional
weapons was a religious duty. Terrorist groups worldwide have
ready access to information on chemical, biological and even
nuclear weapons via the Internet, and we know that al-Qa'ida
was working to acquire some of the most dangerous chemical
agents and toxins.
Documents recovered from al-Qa'ida facilities in
Afghanistan show that bin Ladin was pursuing a sophisticated
biological weapons research program. We also believe that bin
Ladin was seeking to acquire or develop a nuclear device. Al-
Qa'ida may be pursuing a radioactive dispersal device, what
some call a dirty bomb.
Alternatively, al-Qa'ida or other terrorist groups might
also try to launch conventional attacks against the chemical or
nuclear industrial infrastructure of the United States to cause
widespread toxic or radiological damage.
We are also alert to the possibility of cyber warfare
attack by terrorists. September 11 demonstrated our dependence
on critical infrastructure systems that rely on electronic and
computer networks. Attacks of this nature will become an
increasingly viable option for the terrorists as they and other
foreign adversaries become more familiar with these targets and
the technologies required to attack them.
The terrorist threat goes well beyond al-Qa'ida. The
situation in the Middle East continues to fuel terrorism and
anti-U.S. sentiment worldwide. Groups like the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad and Hamas have escalated their violence against
Israel, and the Intifada has rejuvenated once-dormant groups
like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. If
these groups feel that U.S. actions are threatening their
existence, they may begin targeting Americans directly, as
Hizbollah's terrorist wing already does.
We're also watching states like Iran and Iraq that continue
to support terrorist groups. Iran continues to provide support,
includingarms transfers, to the Palestinian rejection groups
and Hizbollah. Tehran also has failed to move decisively against al-
Qa'ida members who have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan. Iraq has a
long history of supporting terrorists, including giving sanctuary to
Abu Nidal.
The war on terrorism, Mr. Chairman, has dealt severe blows
to al-Qa'ida and its leadership. The group has been denied its
safe haven and strategic command center in Afghanistan. Drawing
on both our own assets and increased cooperation from allies
around the world, we are uncovering terrorist plans and
breaking up their cells. These efforts have yielded the arrest
of nearly 1,000 al-Qa'ida operatives in over 60 countries and
have disrupted terrorist operations and potential terrorist
attacks.
Mr. Chairman, bin Ladin did not believe that we would
invade his sanctuary. He saw the United States as soft,
impatient, unprepared and fearful of a long bloody war of
attrition. He did not count on the fact that we had lined up
allies that could help us overcome barriers of terrain and
culture. He did not know about the collection and operational
initiatives that will allow us to strike with great accuracy at
the heart of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. He underestimated our
capabilities, our readiness and our resolve.
That said, I must repeat that al-Qa'ida has not yet been
destroyed. It and other like-minded groups remain willing and
able to strike at us. Al-Qa'ida's leaders, still at large, are
working to reconstitute the organization and resume its
terrorist operations. We must eradicate these organizations by
denying them their sources of financing, eliminating their
ability to hijack charitable organizations for their terrorist
purposes. We must be prepared for a long war and we must not
falter.
Mr. Chairman, we must also look beyond the immediate danger
of terrorist attacks to the conditions that allow terrorism to
take root around the world. These conditions are no less
threatening to U.S. national security than terrorism itself.
The problems that terrorists exploit--poverty, alienation and
ethnic tensions--will grow more acute over the next decade.
This will especially be the case in those parts of the world
that have served as the most fertile recruiting grounds for
Islamic extremist groups.
We have already seen in Afghanistan and elsewhere that
domestic unrest and conflict in weak states is one of the
factors that create an environment conducive to terrorism. More
importantly, demographic trends tell us that the world's
poorest and most politically unstable regions, which include
parts of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, will have the
largest youth populations in the world over the next two
decades and beyond. Most of these countries will lack the
economic institutions or the resources to effectively integrate
these youth into their societies.
All of these challenges come together in parts of the
Muslim world, and let me give you just one example. One of the
places where they converge that has the greatest long-term
impact on any society is its educational system. Primary and
secondary education in parts of the Muslim world is often
dominated by an interpretation of Islam that teaches
intolerance and hatred. The graduates of these schools,
madrases, provide the foot soldiers for many of the Islamic
militant groups that operate throughout the Muslim world.
Let me underscore what the President has affirmed. Islam
itself is neither an enemy nor a threat to the United States.
But the increasing anger toward the West and toward governments
friendly to us among Islamic extremists and their sympathizers
clearly is a threat to us. We have seen and continue to see
these dynamics play out across the Muslim world. Our campaign
in Afghanistan has made great progress, but the road ahead is
fraught with challenges. The Afghan people, with international
assistance, are working to overcome a traditionally weak
central government, a devastated infrastructure, a grave
humanitarian crisis, and ethnic divisions that deepened over
the last 20 years of conflict. The next few months will be an
especially fragile period.
Let me turn to Pakistan, Mr. Chairman. September 11 and the
response to it were the most profound external events for
Pakistan since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and
the U.S. response to that. The Musharraf government's alignment
with the United States and its abandonment of nearly a decade
of support for the Taliban represent a fundamental political
shift with inherent political risks because of the militant
Islamic and anti-American sentiments that exist within
Pakistan.
President Musharraf's intention to establish a moderate,
tolerant, Islamic state, as outlined in his 12 January speech,
is being welcomed by most Pakistanis, but we still have to
confront major vested interests. The speech is energizing
debate across the Muslim world about which vision of Islam is
the right one for the future of the Islamic community.
Musharraf established a clear and forceful distinction between
a narrow, intolerant, conflict-ridden vision of the past and an
inclusive, tolerant, and peace-oriented vision of the future.
The speech also addressed the jihad issue by citing the
distinction the prophet Mohammad made between the smaller jihad
involving violence and the greater jihad that focuses on
eliminating poverty and helping the needy.
Although September 11 highlighted the challenges that India
and Pakistan and their relations pose for U.S. policy, the
attack on the Indian parliament on December 13th was even more
destabilizing, resulting as it did in new calls for military
action against Pakistan and subsequent mobilization on both
sides. The chance of war between these two nuclear armed states
is higher than at any point since 1971. If India were to
conduct large-scale offensive operations into Pakistani
Kashmir, Pakistan might retaliate with strikes of its own, in
the belief that its nuclear deterrent would limit the scope of
an Indian nuclear counter-attack.
Both India and Pakistan are publicly downplaying the risks
of nuclear conflict in the current crisis. We are deeply
concerned, however, that a conventional war, once begun, could
escalate into a nuclear confrontation, and here is a place
where diplomacy and American engagement has made an enormous
difference.
Let me turn to Iraq. Saddam has responded to our progress
in Afghanistan with a political and diplomatic charm offensive
to make it appear that Baghdad is becoming more flexible on
U.N. sanctions and inspection issues. Last month, he sent
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Azizto Moscow and Beijing to
profess Iraq's new openness to meet its U.N. obligations and to seek
their support. Baghdad's international isolation is also decreasing as
support for the sanctions regime erodes among other states in the
region.
Saddam has carefully cultivated neighboring states, drawing
them into economically dependent relationships in the hopes of
further undermining their support for sanctions. The profits he
gains from these relationships provide him with the means to
reward key supporters, and more importantly to fund his pursuit
of weapons of mass destruction. His calculus is never about
bettering or helping the Iraqi people.
Let me be clear. Saddam remains a threat. He is determined
to thwart U.N. sanctions, press ahead with weapons of mass
destruction, and resurrect the military force he had before the
Gulf War. Today he maintains his vise grip on the levers of
power through a pervasive intelligence and security apparatus,
and even his reduced military force, which is less than half of
its pre-war size, remains capable of defeating more poorly
armed internal opposition and threatening Iraq's neighbors.
As I said earlier, we continue to watch Iraq's involvement
in terrorist activities. Baghdad has a long history of
supporting terrorism, altering its targets to reflect changing
priorities and goals. It has also had contacts with al-Qa'ida.
Their ties may be limited by diverging ideologies, but the two
sides' mutual antipathy towards the United States and the Saudi
royal family suggest that tactical cooperation between them is
possible, even though Saddam is well aware that such activity
would carry serious consequences.
In Iran, we are concerned that the reform movement may be
losing its momentum. For almost five years, President Khatami
and his reformist supporters have been stymied by Supreme
Leader Khamenei and the hard-liners. The hard-liners have
systematically used the unelected institutions they control--
the security forces, the judiciary, and the guardians council--
to block reforms that challenge their entrenched interests.
They have closed newspapers, forced members of Khatami's
cabinet from office, and arrested those who have dared to speak
out against their tactics.
Discontent with the current domestic situation is
widespread, and cuts across the social spectrum. Complaints
focus on the lack of pluralism and government accountability,
social restrictions and poor economic performance. Frustrations
are growing as the populace sees elected institutions such as
the Majlis and the presidency unable to break the hardliners'
hold on power.
The hard-line regime appears secure for now because
security forces have easily contained dissenters and arrested
potential opposition leaders. No one has emerged to rally
reformers into a forceful movement for change, and the Iranian
public appears to prefer gradual reform to another revolution,
but the equilibrium is fragile and could be upset by a
miscalculation by either the reformers or the hard-line
clerics.
For all of this, reform is not dead. We must remember that
the people of Iran have demonstrated in four national elections
since 1997 that they want change and have grown disillusioned
with the promises of the revolution. Social, intellectual and
political developments are proceeding. Civil institutions are
growing, and new newspapers open as others are closed.
The initial signs of Tehran's cooperation in common cause
with us in Afghanistan are being eclipsed by Iranian efforts to
undermine U.S. influence there. While Iran's officials express
a shared interest in a stable government in Afghanistan, its
security forces appear bent on countering American presence.
This seeming contradiction in behavior reflects a deep-seated
suspicion among Tehran's clerics that the United States is
committed to encircling and overthrowing them, a fear that
could quickly erupt in attacks against our interests.
We have seen little sign of a reduction in Iran's support
for terrorism in the past year. Its participation in the
attempt to transfer arms to the Palestinian Authority via the
Karine A probably was intended to escalate the violence of the
intifada and strengthen the position of Palestinian elements
that prefer armed conflict with Israel.
The current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians
has been raging for almost a year and a half, and it continues
to deteriorate. The violence has hardened the public's
positions on both sides and increased the longstanding
animosity between Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian
leader Arafat. Although many Israelis and Palestinians say they
believe that ultimately the conflict can only be resolved
through negotiations, the absence of any meaningful security
cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and
the escalating and uncontrolled activities of the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad and Hamas make progress extremely difficult.
We're concerned that this environment creates opportunities
for any number of players, most notably Iran, to take steps
that will result in further escalation of violence by radical
Palestinian groups. At the same time, the continued violence
threatens to weak the political center in the Arab world and
increases the challenge for our Arab allies to balance their
support for us against the demands of their public.
Mr. Chairman, let me now turn to the subject of
proliferation. I would like to start by drawing your attention
to several disturbing trends. Weapons of mass destruction
programs are becoming more advanced and effective as they
mature and as countries of concern become more aggressive in
pursuing them. This is exacerbated by the diffusion of
technology over time, which enables proliferators to draw on
the experience of others, and develop more advanced weapons
more quickly than they could otherwise.
Proliferators are also becoming more self-sufficient, and
they are taking advantage of the dual-use nature of weapons of
mass destruction and missile-related technologies to establish
advanced production capabilities and to conduct WMD and
missile-related research under the guise of legitimate
commercial or scientific activity.
With regard to chemical and biological weapons, the threat
continues to grow for a variety of reasons and to present us
with monitoring challenges. On the nuclear side, we are
concerned about the possibility of significant nuclear
technology transfers going undetected. This reinforces our need
for closely examining emerging nuclearprograms for sudden leaps
in capability.
On the missile side, the proliferation of ICBM and cruise
missile designs and technology has raised the threat to the
United States from weapons of mass destruction delivery systems
to a critical threshold. As outlined in our recent national
intelligence estimate on the subject, most intelligence
community agencies project that by 2015 the U.S. will most
likely face ICBM threats from North Korea and Iran, and
possibly Iraq. This is in addition to the longstanding missile
forces of Russia and China. Short- and medium-range ballistic
missiles pose a significant threat right now.
Mr. Chairman, Russian entities continue to provide other
countries with technology and expertise applicable to CW, BW,
nuclear and ballistic missile and cruise missile projects.
Russia appears to be the first choice of proliferant states
seeking the most advanced technology and training. These sales
are a major source of funds for Russian commercial and defense
industries and military research and development. Russia
continues to supply significant assistance on nearly all
aspects of Tehran's nuclear program. It is also providing Iran
with assistance on long-range ballistic missile.
Chinese firms remain key suppliers of missile-related
technologies to Pakistan, Iran and several other countries.
This in spite of Beijing's November 2000 missile pledge not to
assist in any way countries seeking to develop nuclear-capable
ballistic missiles. Most of China's efforts involve solid
propellant ballistic missiles, developments for countries that
are largely dependent on Chinese expertise and materials. But
it has also sold cruise missiles to countries of concern, such
as Iran.
North Korea continues to export complete ballistic missiles
and production capabilities, along with related raw materials,
components and expertise. Profits from these sales help
Pyongyang to support its missile and probably other WMD
development programs, and in turn generate new products to
offer its customers, primarily Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iran.
North Korea continues to comply with the terms of the
agreed framework that are directly related to the freeze on its
reactor program. But Pyongyang has warned that it is prepared
to walk away from the agreement if it concluded that the United
States was not living up to its end of the deal.
Iraq continues to build and expand an infrastructure
capable of producing weapons of mass destruction. Baghdad is
expanding its civilian chemical industries in ways that could
be diverted quickly into CW production. We believe Baghdad
continues to pursue ballistic missile capabilities that exceed
the restrictions imposed by U.N. resolutions. With substantial
foreign assistance, it could flight-test a longer-range
ballistic missile within the next five years.
We believe that Saddam never abandoned his nuclear weapons
program. Iraq maintains a significant number of nuclear
scientists, program documentation, and probably some dual-use
manufacturing infrastructure that could support a reinvigorated
nuclear weapons program. Baghdad's access to foreign expertise
could support a rejuvenated program. But our major near-term
concern is the possibility that Saddam might gain access to
fissile material.
Iran remains a serious concern because of its across-the-
board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile
capabilities. Tehran may be able to indigenously produce enough
fissile material for a nuclear weapon by later this decade.
Mr. Chairman, both India and Pakistan are working on the
doctrine and tactics for more advanced nuclear weapons,
producing fissile material and increasing their stockpiles. We
have continuing concerns that both sides may not be done with
nuclear testing. Nor can we rule out the possibility that
either country could deploy their most advanced nuclear weapons
without additional testing.
Mr. Chairman, I want to talk about Russia, China and North
Korea, and then we will go to questions. And I appreciate the
patience, but I think it's important.
Mr. Chairman, with regard to Russia, the most striking
development, aside from the issues I have just raised,
regarding Russia over the past year has been Moscow's greater
engagement with the United States. Even before September 11,
President Putin had moved to engage the United States as part
of a broader effort to integrate Russia more fully into the
West, modernize its economy, and regain international status
and influence. This strategic shift away from a zero-sum view
of relations is consistent with Putin's stated desire to
address many socioeconomic problems that could cloud Russia's
future.
During his second year in office, he moved strongly to
advance his policy agenda. He pushed the Duma to pass key
economic legislation on budget reform, legitimizing urban
property sales, flattening and simplifying tax rates, and
reducing red tape for small businesses. His support for his
economic team and its fiscal rigor positioned Russia to pay
back wages and pensions to state workers, and amassed a post-
Soviet high of almost $39 billion in reserves. He has pursued
military reform. And all of this is promising, Mr. Chairman. He
is trying to build a strong presidency that can ensure these
reforms are implemented across Russia, while managing a
fragmented bureaucracy beset by internal networks that serve
private interests.
In his quest to build la strong state, however, we have to
be mindful of the fact that he is trying to establish
parameters within which political forces must operate. This
managed democracy is illustrated by his continuing moves
against independent national television companies. On the
economic front, Putin will have to take on bank reform,
overhaul Russia's entrenched monopolies and judicial reform to
move the country closer to a Western-style market economy, and
attract much-needed foreign investment.
Putin has made no headway in Chechnya. Despite his hint in
September of a possible dialogue with Chechen moderates, the
fighting has intensified in recent months, and thousands of
Chechen guerrillas and their fellow Arab mujahidin fighters
remain. Moscow seems unwilling to consider the compromises
necessary to reach a settlement, while divisions among the
Chechens make it hard to find a representative interlocutor.
The war meanwhile threatens to spill over into neighboring
Georgia.
After September 11, Putin emphatically chose to join us in
the fight against terrorism. The Kremlin blames Islamic
radicalism for the conflict in Chechnya, and believes it to be
a serious threat to Russia. Moscow sees the U.S.-led
counterterrorism effort, particularly the demise of the Taliban
regime, as an important gain in countering the radical Islamic
threat to Russia and Central Asia.
So far Putin's outreach to the United States has incurred
little political damage, largely because of his strong domestic
standing. At the same time, Mr. Chairman, Moscow retains
fundamental differences with us, and suspicion about U.S.
motive persists among Russian conservatives, especially within
the military and the security services. Putin has called the
intended U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty a mistake, but has
downplayed its impact on Russia. At the same time, Russia is
likely to pursue a variety of countermeasures and new weapons
system to defeat a U.S.-deployed missile defense.
With regard to China, Mr. Chairman, I told you last year
that China's drive to become a great power was coming more
sharply into focus. The challenge, I said, was that Beijing saw
the United States as the primary obstacle to its realization of
that goal. This was in spite of the fact that the Chinese
leaders at the same time judged that they needed to maintain
good ties with us.
A lot has happened in U.S.-China relations over the past
year, from the tenseness of the EP-3 episode in April, to the
positive image of President Bush and Jiang Zemin standing
together in Shanghai last fall, highlighting our shared fight
against terrorism.
September 11 changed the context of China's approach to us,
but it did not change the fundamentals. China is developing an
increasingly competitive economy and building a modern military
force with the ultimate objective of asserting itself as a
great power in East Asia. And although Beijing joined the
coalition against terrorism, it remains skeptical of U.S.
intentions in Central and South Asia. It fears that we are
gaining regional influence at China's expense, and views our
encouragement of a Japanese military role in counterterrorism
as support for Japanese rearmament, something that the Chinese
firmly oppose.
On the leadership side, Beijing is likely to be preoccupied
this year with succession jockeying, as top leaders decide who
will get what positions, who will retire at the Party Congress,
and in the changeover in government positions that will follow
next spring. This preoccupation is likely to translate into a
cautious and defensive approach on most policy issues. It
probably also translates into a persistently nationalist
foreign policy, as each of the contenders in the succession
context will be obliged to avoid any hint of being soft on the
United States.
Taiwan also remains the focus of China's military
modernization programs. Over the past year, Beijing's military
training exercises have taken on an increasingly real-world
focus, emphasizing rigorous practice and operational
capabilities and improving the military's actual ability to use
force. This is aimed not only at Taiwan but at increasing the
risk to the United States itself in any future Taiwan
contingency. China also continues to upgrade and expand the
conventional short-range ballistic missile force it has arrayed
against Taiwan.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me say that with regard to North
Korea the suspension last year of engagement between Pyongyang,
Seoul and Washington reinforced the concerns I cited last year
about Kim Jong-II's intentions towards us and our allies in
Northeast Asia. His reluctance to pursue a constructive
dialogue with the South, or to undertake meaningful reforms
suggests that he remains focused on maintaining internal
control at the expense of addressing the fundamental economic
failures that keep the North Koreans mired in poverty, and pose
a long-term threat to the country's stability.
North Korea's large standing army continues to be a primary
claimant on scarce resources, and we see no evidence that
Pyongyang has abandoned its goal of eventual reunification of
the peninsula under the North's control.
Mr. Chairman, I skipped some things, and I'll end there,
because I think we want to move to questions as soon as you
can. I wonder, Mr. Chairman, if I can just respond for a minute
to both of your opening statements on the whole terrorism issue
and how we proceed ahead, because I think it's important. You
get to speak to the American people--so do I--and I think it's
important that they hear us on this question.
We welcome the Committee's review of our record on
terrorism. It's important we have a record. It is a record of
discipline, strategy, focus and action. We are proud of that
record. We have been at war with al-Qa'ida for over five years.
Our collective success inside Afghanistan bears a reflection of
the importance we attach to the problem and a reflection of a
demonstrated commitment to expanding our human assets,
technical operations, fused intelligence, seamless cooperation
with the military. These are things we have been working on
very hard over the last five years.
During the millennium threat, we told the President of the
United States that there would be between five and 15 attacks
against American interests both here and overseas. None of
these attacks occurred--primarily because of the result of
heroic effort on the part of the FBI and the CIA inside the
United States and overseas to ensure that those attacks were
not successful.
A year later the COLE was bombed. We lost a battle there.
Part of the problem that we need to address as you look at this
is not only to assess what we can do unilaterally or in
conjunction with our military and law enforcement colleagues,
but the countries out there who have often deflected us, or
have not recognized there was a terrorism problem, who didn't
help us solve problems that we could not solve simply on our
own.
In the last spring and summer we saw--in the spring and
summer of 2001--again we saw spectacular threat reporting about
massive casualties against the United States. These threat
reportings had very little texture with regard to what was
occurring inside the United States. We again launched a massive
disruption effort. We know that we stopped three or four
American facilities from being bombed overseas. We know we
saved many American lives. We never had thetexture that said
the date, time and place of the event inside the United States would
result in September 11. It was not the result of the failure of
attention and discipline and focus and consistent effort, and the
American people need to understand that.
What Tom Ridge is doing today in protecting the homeland,
in thinking about our border control policies, our visa
policies, the relationship between all our organizations--
airport security--all of these things must be in place.
Intelligence will never give you 100 percent predictive
capability on terrorist events.
This community has worked diligently over the last five
years, and the American people need to understand that with the
resources and authorities and priorities the men and women of
the FBI and the CIA performed heroically. Whatever shortcomings
we may have, we owe it to the country to look at ourselves
honestly and systematically. But when people use the word
``failure,'' ``failure'' means no focus, no attention, no
discipline--and those were not present in what either we or the
FBI did here and around the world.
And we will continue to work at it. But when the
information or the secret isn't available, you need to make
sure your backside is protected. You need to make sure there is
a security regime in place that gives you the prospect of
succeeding--and that's what we all need to work on together.
The decision of the President to go inside the sanctuary
and take the war to the Taliban and al-Qa'ida may be the most
significant thing that happened, because all of this
preparation has resulted in destroying that sanctuary, even as
we chase everybody around the world. We have disrupted numerous
terrorist acts since September the 11th, and we will continue
to do so with the FBI. And we welcome the Committee's review.
It is important for the American people. But how we paint it is
equally important, because they need to know that there are
competent men and women who risk their lives and undertake
heroic risks to protect them.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you, Mr. Director.
Mr. Director, we are all concerned about the aftermath of
September 11 and what we are doing in order to reduce the
prospects of a similar horrific event in the future. One of the
issues that you discussed was the fact that Usama bin Ladin did
not believe that the United States would retaliate in the way
it did.
What was the basis of bin Ladin's failure to appreciate
what the consequences of his action should be? And what is your
assessment of the similar feelings of other terrorist groups or
of the leaders of the nations that you have described as being
the most threatening to the United States as to what U.S.
response would be to their actions against the interests of the
United States here in the homeland or abroad?
Director Tenet. Well, sir, obviously in my statement--well,
I have never had a chance to talk to bin Ladin--I would love
the opportunity some day, and I speculate. But I think that the
importance of the sanctuary--I think he always believed it
would be denied as a place where we would operate directly. And
I think the importance of devastating the central command and
control node can't be underestimated. The disruption that's
occurred is formidable. And Afghanistan will not be replicated
other places in the world.
Other governments with whom we are working with will have
to step up to the challenge of recognizing that just because it
is Americans who are killed, in fact in the World Trade Center
many, many people from many nations were killed. Their law
enforcement practices, their visa control systems, their
willingness to change their laws to allow us to work with them
to disrupt these organizations means that what we need to tell
these people is that you cannot operate any place safely in the
world, and that rather than go up and down--rather than a
focused--you know, one of the problems is people somehow--my
fear is six months from now everybody will say, well, the World
Trade Center has receded--so the leadership that the President
has shown and the country has shown is going to make a marked
difference, because they need to understand that there will be
consequences that are very real and very direct to their
ability to try and hurt us.
Having said that, we know they'll continue to plan. We know
that they will hurt us again. We have to minimize their ability
to do so, because there's no perfection in this business.
The importance of Tom Ridge's effort in unifying homeland
security cannot be underestimated as the important back end to
what we and the FBI do. And as we get better at this, what we
hope to do is change the security environment that terrorists
operate in. After all, if you look carefully, in our closed
session today, if you look at the profile of these 19 or 20
people, most were here legally. Most operated almost as sleeper
cells. Most gave the FBI no probable cause to believe something
was going to happen. Compartmentation of the information, all
of these are very difficult things for us to deal with. And we
have to get after it. So that's how I'd answer the question,
sir.
Chairman Graham. Mr. Ford, does the State Department and
our diplomatic corps feel as if it has sufficient understanding
of the opinion of our adversaries, whether they be governments
such as those who were described as the axis of evil
governments, or non governmental groups such as other terrorist
operations--what their expectation is of a U.S. response to an
act by them that would be adverse to our interests?
Mr. Ford. Mr. Chairman, I think we all would agree that we
never have enough information. We can always use new knowledge
about all of these threats that we face. I think that the State
Department in general--our embassies overseas, the people here
in Washington--feel as if both the President and the Congress
are providing us with the resources that we need to be able to
not only understand the problems, but also, at least from a
Department of State perspective, express U.S. views overseas
through our diplomats.
I think if I had to point to one area which I think that
the State Department has as a priority, it is increasing the
number of young diplomats overseas who are reporting basically
on an unclassified basis on various groups--students, labor,
business, political leaders to be.Much of that reporting over
the last 20 years has been decimated by budget cuts and reductions in
the size of the embassies. Secretary Powell is committed to changing
that. So I think that we in INR are very grateful for the changes that
we see occurring, because there is going to be more information, more
knowledge for us to analyze and provide to the Secretary and to others
in the community.
Chairman Graham. I am going to pursue this line of
questioning further. The order of questioning will be the Vice
Chairman, followed by Senators Roberts, Rockefeller, Bayh,
DeWine and Kyl.
Mr. Vice Chairman.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Director Tenet, I think your statement today is--you have
laid out a lot of the challenges and a lot of the successes,
and we all know that--only maybe the public doesn't all know of
a lot of the successes of the CIA and the FBI and NSA, and
other members of the intelligence community. We all know that
we have some of the best and dedicated people that you could
recruit in America at the CIA, at the FBI, at the NSA--and we
can go on--and the DIA and you name it.
But some of us are worried about whether the system they
are in is designed to fail. And this would be part, I think, of
our overall inquiry which we will be into. But that's another
day, and that's a big thing. Because what we are really
interested in here is designing a system, helping the
intelligence community with funds and with legislative
structure to do the job to protect the security of the American
people. I think we are all in the same book, the same page and
book.
But with that in mind--and you went through it some a few
minutes ago, Director Tenet--why were we utterly unaware of the
planning and execution of the September 11 attacks? In other
words, what went wrong? We know that you are not going, as you
laid out, you are not going to ever be 100 percent. But these
attacks were so well planned, so well executed, I know they
caught us all by surprise, had to catch you by surprise. You
weren't shocked, because you warned us before about these type
attacks. But the American people ask these questions. We will
be asking them, and I know you have asked yourselves those
questions.
Director Tenet. Well, sir, it's an important question, but
I have to tell you that when you do this every day--and we do
this every day----
Vice Chairman Shelby. Absolutely.
Director Tenet [continuing]. The shock was not that the
attack occurred, but where it occurred. So, was there a piece
of information that was collected that led us there? No. Did we
know in broad terms that he intended to strike the United
States? There is no doubt about that. He started in 1993. They
tried to come over the border in Canada during the millennium
threat.
The operational difficulties of what you are up against in
the United States, when you take the profile of these people--
and Dale Watson should speak to this himself--and what they
showed, and how little evidence they provided to us in terms of
this is something we are now evaluating in terms of what is the
profile, how do they operate. How do we talk to states and
locals about things? What other changes need to be made?
But is there some piece of information out there, sir, that
nobody saw? That's not the case. In fact, in July and August,
when we saw the operational tempo around the world go down
overseas, it was very clear that what had been planned had been
delayed. It was very clear in our own minds that this country
was a target. There was no texture to that feeling. We wrote
about it, we talked about it, we warned about it. The nature of
the warning was almost spectacular. Some people in town thought
that this was deception. It was never deception, because of how
much we understand this target.
Did we have penetrations of the target? Absolutely. Did we
have technical operations? Absolutely. Where did the secret for
the planning reside? Probably in the heads of three or four
people. And at the end of the day, all you can do is continue
to make the effort to steal that secret and break into this
leadership structure. And we have to keep working at it. There
will be nothing you do that will guarantee 100 percent
certainty. It will never happen.
Vice Chairman Shelby. What have we learned? What have you
learned in the intelligence community that you can share in the
open session with the American people?
Director Tenet. There are some positive things that have
been learned about what you talk about about future structure,
about all of the fusion that has occurred--the federation of
military intelligence and its analysis; the fusion of how NSA,
CIA, and the community operates in terms of bringing all
sources together, which we have worked on quite hard over the
last five years; the notion that you have--people have said
individual disciplines functioning autonomously where
information is not shared is simply untrue.
The importance of continuing clandestine human operations
to penetrate these groups, the importance of continued
cooperation with allied countries around the world who help you
do this business is absolutely indispensable. The resources
that the President has provided us to enhance our flexibility,
to maximize our ability to operate, is a very important lesson.
You can't operate in 68 countries without a substantial
resource base, and he has given us that opportunity.
So there is an extraordinary knowledge of this target. We
did not start from a standing start. We wouldn't have succeeded
the way we did with our military and our Bureau colleagues in
Afghanistan if we had not known how to act and a lot of the
reforms that we have been talking about had not been put in
place. The relentless pursuit of the secret and the human
penetration of these organizations is something that we have to
continue to attempt to do. And that progress over the last five
years has been substantial.
Mr. Ford. Mr. Chairman, could I add a comment? INR, as you
know, is a very small organization. We are not representative
of all of the bigger intelligence organizations. But I think
that at least from our perspective, my perspective, I learned
one important thing--is that for me getting more money or even
more people was not what I--since I didn't get any of that--it
wasn't something that I really missed. The factis that what I
couldn't have gotten by without were my people, my experts. People that
have been on the job 25, 30 years, 15 years, you can't replace them
with 10 rookies. You have one old hand that might train 10 rookies, but
you are not going to be able to have the rookies come in and start
producing right away. It's something that you have to build for the
future.
I don't know about the rest of the community--I think they
face the same problem we do--but over the next five to seven
years we are losing a good portion of our expertise. So that
while we don't have a problem recruiting new people, we are
going to have to work on retaining the ones that we have got,
and making sure before they leave us that they leave us a
legacy of students and apprentices that have learned all the
tricks of the trade before they leave. And that's something
that I think you can help the DCI and all of us with in terms
of thinking long term with personnel. I know it's expensive. I
know it's a problem.
You can't have good intelligence without good people,
period.
Director Tenet. Mr. Chairman, I think it's true.
Chairman Graham. Mr. Director.
Director Tenet. I think it's true of all of us. By the year
2005, between 30 and 40 percent of the men and women of CIA
will have been there for five years or less. We're about to
overhaul the entire compensation and reward system to reflect
on keeping the best and the brightest and retaining expertise.
But at the end of the day, people matter, and expertise, as is
embodied in our Counterterrorism Center and knowledge of the
target, can never be replaced.
Vice Chairman Shelby. We can help, and we will help. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
There has been a nationwide alert, from time to time, to
the law enforcement agencies and the private sector to prepare
for the possibility of attacks against critical infrastructure
facilities. I know you've had some sit-downs with the
Department of Agriculture. When we asked the so-called experts
in Emerging Threats Subcommittee in the Armed Services
Committee, what keeps you up at night, they would refer to
bioterrorism; cyber attacks; chemical warfare; a weapon of mass
destruction--i.e. the dirty bomb that you referred to; their
use of explosives. But you can list about 100 things, and
they'll probably do 101, because that's the definition of a
terrorist.
We've had a discussion about the possibility of anybody
conducting what I call agriterrorism, or an attack on our food
supply, food security. I know when we asked the FBI two or
three years ago about the risk and the chance, the risk was
very high in terms of chaotic results all throughout the
country not only in farm country from an economic standpoint,
but the specter of having the National Guard, you know, handing
out your food supplies to people who are trying to hoard food.
My question to you is, where is that in your status of
worries? And what terrorist groups are the likeliest to conduct
such operations?
Director Tenet. Well, sir, first, I met with the Secretary
of Agriculture last week to discuss this, to discuss a tighter
relationship between us in working through this. But one of the
things that we're learning, and we'll talk a bit about it more
in closed session today, is the BW piece of this seems to be
more advanced than anything else, and the focus on pathogens
and the development of different strains of diseases.
If you think about what they will try to do to us, this al-
Qa'ida/Sunni network--psychological disruption, eat away at the
fabric of your people, make it difficult to detect, and when
you think about agriterrorism, the food process, all those
things--this is something we have to get ahead of. This is
something we need to think through a lot harder, because there
is vulnerability.
Now, how you quantify it at this moment, I don't have an
ability to quantify it, but you do know that you better get
ahead of it now, because of the way they exploit
vulnerabilities.
Senator Roberts. I've said that to Tom Ridge and others. It
is so easy to do. And I think the results would be absolutely
catastrophic.
Let me ask you another question on assessment of the threat
to the United States in our own hemisphere. If there's one area
that really represents problems to the daily life and
pocketbooks of Americans in regards to drugs, in regards to
immigration, in regards to border safety, in regards to
energy--because Mexico and also Venezuela do supply a great
majority of our energy, not to mention trade--it is Latin and
Central America, or what we refer to as the 31 countries of the
Southern Command.
I'm very worried about that, more particularly in regards
to Venezuela and a fellow name Hugo Chavez, who I think could
be another Castro.
I would appreciate your assessment. You do that on page 21
of your testimony. If you could underscore that a little bit,
the threat to the U.S. within our own hemisphere, and are there
organized terrorist cells in Central and South America that
could carry out attacks against our country, such as 9/11?
Director Tenet. Sir, obviously, Venezuela is important
because they're the third-largest supplier of petroleum. I
would say that Mr. Chavez--and the State Department may say
this--probably doesn't have the interests of the United States
at heart. But at the same time, there is a deterioration in the
economic and general conditions in that country that he's
responsible for. So I think he's a tough actor for us.
Maybe you want to say some more about that.
Mr. Ford. Well, it seems to me--and I'm not an expert on
Chavez or South America--but when you can't solve your basic,
fundamental economic problems that Venezuela faces with the
natural resources that it has available, you've got to blame
somebody. And I think that he's found that it's easier and more
politically correct for him in Venezuela to blame us.
Senator Roberts. Well, that's what Castro does.
Mr. Ford. That's right. And that's why he joins with Castro
in several occasions in voicing concerns about the U.S. That
doesn't bother me so much as long as it's just words. But there
are alsoindications that he is sympathetic and helpful to the
FARC in Colombia and various other groups. So that I'm sure that all of
us are going to be watching very closely to see what goes on in
Venezuela and with President Chavez in particular.
Senator Roberts. Let me ask you the ``axis of evil''
question, which has started some meaningful dialogue with our
allies overseas, more especially our NATO allies. From a
counterterrorism standpoint, what is more threatening about
Iran, Iraq and North Korea, in view of the President's State of
the Union message, than other countries that are listed as
state sponsors of terrorism?
Director Tenet. I'm sorry, sir, what is more----
Senator Roberts. What is more threatening about these
countries? Obviously, the President has indicated you have to
go to the source. He has put these countries on notice. There
is what I call some meaningful dialogue now as to what that
really means. And what I'm asking you to do is to say from a
threat standpoint, from a counterterrorism standpoint, what's
more threatening about these countries than the others?
Director Tenet. Well, sir, first of all, the Iranians and
their support for Hizbollah, I mean Hizbollah is a world-class
terrorist organization, and their continued use of Hizbollah
and their own surrogates is a very fundamental challenge to
American interests.
Senator Roberts. I'm for the speech, by the way. I just
would like to get your take on it.
Director Tenet. Yes, sir. But from a terrorism perspective,
their continued use of both terrorist groups and their own
IRGC, not only to plan terrorist acts, but to support radical
Islamic groups, radical Palestinian groups, undermine the peace
process, when you couple that support with a WMD profile,
ballistic missiles, nuclear capability, I mean, you have--in a
regime controlled by hardliners, you have a series of twin
issues in the convergence I talk about that poses substantial
risk and challenge to the United States, and we have to pay
attention to it.
The North Korean piece, I would say is, look, the ballistic
missile threat that we talked about in our Estimate in my
testimony, you know, every--the SCUD/Nodong exports are the
basis of which so much of this ICBM capability is going to be
developed and the ability of countries to mix and match those
frames and further threaten us, not just with short-range
ballistic missiles, but with longer-range missiles that you
have to think about as becoming more prominent to you.
And the Iraqi piece, as I referenced, you know, the WMD
profile I gave you and my interest in being very careful about
was there a convergence of interest here between al-Qa'ida and
the Iraqis, don't know the answer to the question yet--pursuing
it very, very carefully. There was a press story today that
said CIA dismisses these linkages.
Well, you don't dismiss linkages when you have a group like
al-Qa'ida who probably buys and sells all kinds of capabilities
for people who have converging interests, whether Sunni or
Shi'a, and how they mixed and matched training capabilities,
safe harboring, and money is something we're taking a look at.
So nobody dismisses anything. Everybody's on the table, and
these networks of terrorism should no longer be thought about
purely in terms of the state's interests, what they say
publicly, what their obvious interests are and how they see the
benefit in hurting the United States.
Senator Roberts. I really appreciate that. Let me ask you
one more question on what the coffee klatch or the coffee club
in Dodge City, Kansas, would ask. And that is, there have been
a number of reports, either right or not, that the CIA had
downgraded its human intelligence effort in the Afghan region.
I know that you have stated very clear that it's not the case,
that there were serious shortages of officers within the
necessary language qualifications. That probably is the case.
And there was a disinclination to get too close to the
terrorist networks. Now I'm not trying to put that as a fact;
I'm just saying that's background.
But what the fellows at the Dodge City coffee klatch ask me
is, if John Walker Lindh could get to talk to Usama bin Ladin,
why in the heck couldn't the CIA get an agent closer to him?
Director Tenet. Well, I'm not going to do this in open
session, but you better tell everybody at the cafe it's not
true.
Senator Roberts. I got you.
Chairman Graham. Thank you, Senator.
Mr. Watson. Mr. Chairman, may I just quickly comment?
I know you're interested in the Department of Agriculture,
Senator, and they receive all our threat warnings and the
information. And additionally, a Department of Agriculture
detailee is with us since 9-11, and we're considering that in
our Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Senator Roberts. I appreciate that. I talked with them
yesterday, and they indicate if there was a stovepipe, it
doesn't exist anymore.
Mr. Watson. That's right.
Chairman Graham. Senator Bayh.
Senator Bayh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
gentlemen, for being with us today. I am grateful for your
service to our country. I'm reminded of I think it was a quote
put on the cover of the budget submission last year, quoting
Napoleon to the effect that a well-placed spy is worth two
divisions. With the war that we're fighting today, I think
that's probably an underassessment. So what you do is vitally,
vitally important.
I'm going to direct my questions to Director Tenet. Any of
the rest of you who would like to jump in, please feel free to
do so.
Director Tenet. They would love to comment, too, Senator.
Senator Bayh. I'm sure they would.
I was reminded of something Abraham Lincoln also once said,
Director, about your being the only one who was given the
opportunity to make an oral statement, about being run out of
town on a rail. He said, ``Except for the honor of the thing, I
would just as soon have passed it up.'' So in any event, thank
you for your presentation.
I'm going to ask about Iran. I'd first like to lay the
foundation here a little bit. You indicated, Director, that
you've seen little change in Iran's sponsorship of terrorist
activities. Based upon that, I wouldassume that you would still
consider them to be the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the
world. That true?
Director Tenet. Yes, sir.
Senator Bayh. You also indicated that they were involved
in, I think the quote was, across-the-board pursuit of weapons
of mass destruction. Now one of their top officials in the last
several days has come out and categorically denied that they
are involved in seeking chemical, biological or nuclear
weapons. So I would assume that his statements are more proof
of their mendacity than their innocence, in your opinion.
Is there any doubt in your mind, any doubt whatsoever, that
they are vigorously involved in pursuing weapons of mass
destruction?
Director Tenet. None whatsoever, Senator.
Senator Bayh. Russia and China, you indicated, have been
involved in assisting, directly or indirectly, their pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction. What should we think about that?
If Iran and some of these other regimes are an axis of evil,
are Russia and China involved with enabling evil?
Director Tenet. Well, sir, I would say that, first of all,
they are both separate. The reasons may be different. And at
times we have distinctions between government and entities. And
that's always--and I don't want to make it a big distinction,
but sometimes you're dealing with both those things.
Senator Bayh. The governments in Beijing and Moscow don't
have----
Director Tenet. No, sir, I didn't say that. There are
instances where you have entities that are doing business. But
if you look at the Russian relationship with the Iranians, it's
long term, going back to the time of the czars, an interest in
a strategic relationship there for a whole host of reasons--
access to water, oil and gas, whatever it is.
What is difficult to understand is why the minimal amount
of money you would gain from those kinds of activities in
generating the kind of threat they pose, not just to us, but to
the Russians and Russian interests around the world, would
continue to allow cooperation to occur by entities--with or
without the government's knowledge--why the government can't do
more to get on top of this and ensure that we don't create a
ballistic missile threat in the region that will only result in
other countries in the region acquiring that capability, will
only result in all that. And quite, frankly, this is an issue
of dialogue between the President and President Putin.
Senator Bayh. What's your answer to that question? It's so
manifestly not in their own long-term self-interest.
Director Tenet. Sir, it must be about their perception
about how they gain influence. We haven't talked about
conventional weapons and the importance of that. But as you're
trying to resurrect a modern economy, you don't have a lot of
chips to play with. Weapons are one thing you have to play
with, expertise of people and other things. And it's
incongruous in terms of, on the one hand, you see a Russian
behavior and some very positive things President Putin has done
in terms of reforming their economy and moving in the right
direction; on the other hand, a record on proliferation that I
think belies a commitment to the kind of issues and norms that
we would expect them to pursue. So this is an ongoing
discussion.
But clearly, expertise, foreign assistance, whether it's
Russian or Chinese, is the escalator clause in anybody's
ability to quickly mix and match capabilities and develop
indigenous capabilities. And it is a problem. And you have to
get after, in the Chinese sense, a deeply embedded PLA interest
in earning income from these kinds of activities. You have to
get after strategic influence, particularly what it may buy you
in places like the Middle East, where your country will have an
increasing oil dependency in the future, and the thought about
how you compete against the United States.
But they pursue these for their own reasons. They are
inimical to our own interests and relationships that we would
like to establish, and they will threaten American forces and
interests. So these are problem areas that we have to continue
to talk about every year and put them out in the open because
they're a problem.
Senator Bayh. It seems to me, in evaluating whether the
Russians and the Chinese are truly being cooperative in the war
on terror, the fight against proliferation needs to be
somewhere fairly up high on the list.
Director Tenet. And it's interesting that in the war on
terror, they have been cooperative. You see, everybody checks
different boxes. We have had good cooperation with the Russians
and Chinese on the war on terrorism, and it's an important--you
know, this has given the President and the Secretary of State
an opportunity to try and transform relationships.
Senator Bayh. Getting back to Iran for a minute, the reason
I'm focusing on Iran, Director, is I believe that in the long
run, this may be one of the foremost threats facing our
country, from that regime. What's the Agency's analysis of the
domestic situation within Iran? You mentioned the fact that the
moderates had won the last several elections. What's the
assessment in terms of them eventually gaining more control
over the security and intelligence apparatus in that country?
Director Tenet. Well, as I noted in the statement in some
detail, I think the jury's out. I think--you know, here's some
interesting things to think about. Sixty-three percent of the
Iranian population was born after 1979.
They don't have any context to judge this. There have been
elections. There's a political dialogue in the country. There's
a vibrancy to it.
It's not Iraq in that sense. There are private
relationships where these things are discussed. At the same
time, you see an immature political opposition. And the
immaturity of the opposition is, I think, something to focus
on, dealing with an entrenched, tough security apparatus that
uses non-elected vehicles to break back and make it more
difficult for reform to occur as fast as it might.
So it's an interesting and open question that we have to
continue to follow. So, on the one hand, you have behavior on
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that you are deeply
troubled about.On the other hand, there appears to be a very
big opportunity with people who may want to have nothing to do with all
that or something to do with all that. The Iranians may well, in any
event, want weapons of mass destruction for their own historic
sensibilities of who they are in the region.
But the point is, this is a very conflicted society that is
continuing to evolve. And the question is, when does good
overcome bad, or when do people who want reform, how fast does
the opposition mature? Who's the leader that takes them there?
How does it really flow? These are very interesting, difficult
questions for us.
Senator Bayh. I assume we're allocating significant
resources to that.
Director Tenet. We're paying a lot of attention to those
targets, sir.
Senator Bayh. Mr. Chairman, I have difficulty seeing the
lights from here. Is my time----
Chairman Graham. I'm afraid you're on the red.
Senator Bayh. I'm on the red. Okay, very good. I'd like to
thank you, gentlemen. Director, I'd like to thank you. You're
doing a very good job, and we want to help you any way we can.
Chairman Graham. The next questioners will be Senators
DeWine, Kyl and Edwards. Senator DeWine.
Senator DeWine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Watson, have we had long enough to tell what impact the
U.S. Patriot Act is having, the anti-terrorism bill? Or is the
jury still out on that?
Mr. Watson. The jury is still out on that. But, Senator,
it's been a help, particularly the change in the words of the
FISA, the use of the grand jury material, detaining through the
INS process and those types of things. But it has been helpful
and it will continue to be helpful.
Senator DeWine. We're interested, many of us, of course,
are in seeing what else needs to be done.
Mr. Watson. There are some items we have under discussion
with the department. But as of right now, particularly those
areas I mentioned, particularly the national security letters
we're able to get out much quicker. We appreciate the Patriot
Act.
Senator DeWine. Mr. Tenet----
Director Tenet. Senator, could I comment on that?
Senator DeWine. Please.
Director Tenet. I think that----
Senator DeWine. I'm just trying to help you out here. You
don't have to answer all the questions. Go ahead, Mr. Tenet.
Director Tenet. Access to criminal information, grand jury
information for threat purposes we've now been provided. It's
been a very meaningful contribution to our understanding of a
lot of things that we can now do trend analysis on. It's been
very, very helpful.
Senator DeWine. And that was one of the things that we
hoped.
Director Tenet. Enormously helpful to us.
Mr. Watson. That has been a tremendous help, yes,
absolutely.
Senator DeWine. Good. Mr. Tenet, let me ask you to
speculate, if you could, if you're comfortable in talking about
it, in regard to training camps. Training camps have been
destroyed. How long does it take to set camps like that back up
again? And would you want to speculate about that in public,
about the ability to do that?
Director Tenet. Well, I guess that's all going to be a
function, ultimately, of the interim government, its evolution,
our influence.
Senator DeWine. Well, I don't mean necessarily there.
Director Tenet. Well, other places. As you know, there are
other places.
Admiral Wilson. I'd like to comment on it.
Senator DeWine. Admiral.
Admiral Wilson. What was removed in Afghanistan from al-
Qa'ida, in my view, was the elimination of their Fort Bragg or
their Fort Irwin national training center. And when you arrest
terrorists around the world, they come from many different
nationalities. They come from different cells and
organizations. But virtually all of them have one thing in
common. They were all trained in Afghanistan, indoctrinated in
the camps. It was truly military-style training that was
ongoing. And the best and the brightest of them, they went on
up into other kind of terrorist acts.
So it is difficult to establish the scale and the
complexity of that kind of an operation that was unmolested in
Afghanistan somewhere else, because we are committed to this
global war on terrorism. It's expensive. You can't hide it too
easily and all those sorts of things. But it essentially was as
important to them as I think some of our national training
centers are to our military.
Senator DeWine. That puts it in perspective; appreciate it.
Mr. Watson. And, Senator, the difference, too, is that we
knew about the camps in Afghanistan for years. The difference
now is we did something about it. If somebody someplace else
tries to build a training center, I'm very confident in my
colleagues in Defense and FBI and CIA that they won't be there
very long.
Senator DeWine. I think the President's made that pretty
clear.
Senator Roberts asked you, Director, about South America.
He talked a little bit about the importance of that. And I
guess one of the concerns that we all have is that this is our
backyard. It's not an area that has been overrepresented as far
as our intelligence community.
And now you have all the other problems that we have and
all the drains. We have Colombia. We have Venezuela. We have
Argentina. We have the tri-border region. All our drugs come
out of this area of the world, or most of them do. We could go
on and on and on and on.
So give me a little perspective about how, as the Director,
you can deal with that as far as the resources that you have.
And also, if you could, give me a little insight into what you
see going on in Colombia. Let's assume that the peace
negotiations don't turn out. We hope they do. What do you see
the FARC doing in the future, and what kind ofthreat is that to
U.S. citizens in Colombia? For example, we see the FARC moving into
urban areas more.
Director Tenet. Well, let me get to part two, and then,
with regard to the first question, we should talk about this in
closed session, because it goes to the heart of priorities and
allocation of people and resources. But we are stressed. And
the war on terrorism alone has resulted in a massive migration
of people and resources, and we're trying to balance all these
things. Your back door is vitally important. Drugs is very,
very important.
But there is a tension about how we allocate these things,
Senator, that we're trying to work through right now and make
the best judgments we can about how we allocate people around
the world. Carl, do you want to say something about that?
Mr. Ford. On that first part, I would only add that all of
us, I think, have noticed the coming together of drug
traffickers, organized crime, international organized crime,
and terrorists, even in the sense of just the logistics
arrangement--pass money, do favors for--so that anywhere you
have drug traffickers and organized crime and terrorists,
you're going to have a problem. Clearly there are a number of
places in our own hemisphere that have such problems. Colombia,
other parts of South America come to mind.
This is one that it's very difficult to try to focus on the
immediate problem. I think we in the intelligence community
have to learn flexibility. We have to realize that if you push
one button, four buttons someplace else are going to pop out
and that we have to design an approach that gives us much
greater coverage and depth at the same time. And that's a
challenge.
Senator DeWine. Director, can you just--I know my time is
up--could you just answer briefly the question on Colombia?
Director Tenet. Well, obviously there's an election coming
up. Obviously the peace process is not going forward. We are
concerned that the FARC is going to up the ante here and
threaten--and particularly threaten not only Colombians, but
us. So this is a situation that we're all watching very
carefully.
We have to see how these elections come out and how a new
president decides to engage, and then look at how we want to
continue on with Plan Colombia and how we think about this
problem. But the drug problem is still there. The
narcotrafficking, the insurgency, all of these things continue
to undermine the fabric of this country. And we need to think
our way through, particularly after the election, where we're
going to be.
Senator DeWine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you, Senator. Senator Kyl.
Senator Kyl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, to Mr. Tenet or other members of the panel, I'm
interested in the policy concomitant to your concerns expressed
about controlling technology transfers, especially, as you
said, because of the dual-use capabilities of weapons of mass
destruction and missile-related technologies. What would be
useful to you to better detect and therefore deter such
technology transfers?
Director Tenet. On the policy side, sir?
Senator Kyl. Yes. In other words, you've testified that
this is a big problem. And therefore, you must have an idea of
what might be done to eradicate the problem.
Director Tenet. Sir, one of the challenges we have in
designing a new regime is that you find there are lines that
are drawn, that activity falls beyond whether it's a complete
missile system or components of a missile system. And I haven't
looked at the MTCR, but it is a mistake to assume that the
regimes that are in place provide us the kind of security that
we're looking for. And it's a very important question. I
haven't thought through how I'd redesign it. But I know that a
lot slips underneath.
And the problem with this issue is as follows. The
indigenous capabilities of the people you care about the most,
the component that falls outside of the regime, is all they may
need to complete that work. So we may have design regimes at
one point in time where there was a have-and-have-not quality
to this; in other words, the supplier was the dominant actor
you wanted to watch.
Well, that's not true anymore. And as a consequence,
whatever we design has to acknowledge the fact that things that
come in under the transom, that don't neatly fit into a
verification regime or a legal framework, are every bit as
worrisome to us. But it's an important question.
Mr. Ford. Well, I think that this also goes back to, I
think, Senator Roberts' question--the issue of both weapons of
mass destruction and terrorism. We have this unusual
circumstance where the non-state terrorists, we know they want
them. We know they're trying. But they have not yet succeeded
in getting weapons of mass destruction.
On the other hand, we have the states that traditionally
supported terrorism that are less involved, to some extent,
than they were in the past. But they're going gangbusters with
weapons of mass destruction. If you look out five, 10 years and
you see both of these trends continuing and you think about New
York City, you think about the Pentagon, you think about the
horrendous danger that the world faces, not just America, all
of a sudden weapons of mass destruction takes on a different
context.
Before 9/11, we could talk about terrorism and say, ``Let's
get tough with this and let's get tough with that.'' Some of
our allies didn't even support us. The difference now is when
we talk about proliferation, rather than a new scheme, we need
``You're either with us or you're agin' us.''
Senator Kyl. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy. We've not
been as careful about being able to identify the end users,
which is what both of you are getting to here. We used to pay a
lot of attention to that, and I think you want us to pay more
attention to it. And so may I just request--and the reason I
point to the light is I have two or three other questions here,
and we could talk about this all day--I really would appreciate
and I think the committee would appreciate receiving some kind
of memorandum from you about ideas of what would be useful to
the intelligence community to get a better handle on
thisproblem of technology transfer, dual-use issues, end users and the
like. That would be very, very helpful to us.
I was at the Wehrkunde in Munich, Germany, the annual
security conference, with our NATO allies. And there were some
interesting comments at that conference. I just wanted to
confirm a couple of points, Director Tenet, that I think you
made earlier.
Minister of Defense Ivanov was a bit indignant about
suggestions that Russia was proliferating to Iran, for example,
and said, ``There is absolutely no evidence that Russia is
providing any technology transfer to Iran,'' although he did
say, ``except for the nuclear program, which is for peaceful
purposes.'' Is he correct in that statement?
Director Tenet. No, sir. And Sergei and I have talked about
this privately and directly. So, no, we respectfully disagree.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. And let me confirm what I think you
told Senator Bayh. Is it still correct to call Iran today the
world's largest state sponsor of terrorism or proliferation of
terrorism?
Director Tenet. Yes, sir, I believe that. Does anybody have
a different view?
Senator Kyl. Okay. The reason I mentioned that is that the
President's speech raised a lot of consternation among some of
our allies when he referred to the ``axis of evil.''
I suggested that he wasn't talking about a group of three
countries that were carefully calibrating their policies
together, but rather three sides of a triangle, probably
identifying the three toughest nuts to crack here in terms of
states. And in addition, of course, he made the point there are
many other kinds of organizations. Is that perhaps a more
correct way to look at what you think he might have intended to
say?
Director Tenet. I believe so, sir.
Senator Kyl. And in that regard, all three of these
countries deserve the attention not just of the United States,
but we can certainly use the help of our allies in crafting
policies that may or may not involve military means, but in
crafting policies that would direct our attention jointly to
these three separate and big challenges?
Director Tenet. Yes, sir, and that their participation with
us is absolutely essential if we're not going to experience the
outgrowth of their behavior in some catastrophic way as well.
Senator Kyl. Mr. Chairman, I can't tell from the lights
either, but am I on red?
Chairman Graham. You're in the red zone.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Chairman Graham. Senator Edwards.
Senator Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning,
gentlemen.
Director Tenet, I was on the ground in Afghanistan a few
weeks ago and had the opportunity to meet with some of our
intelligence operatives there and to see the conditions under
which they're operating. And I have to tell you it was very
impressive--the professionalism, the hard work they're doing,
working 24 hours a day under very, very difficult conditions,
extreme weather. There may have been running water where I was,
but I didn't see it. It was a very impressive operation, and
the information they had was also very impressive. So I wanted
to tell you that firsthand.
Director Tenet. Thank you, sir. They're great people.
Senator Edwards. Yeah, very impressive.
But it's obvious there's a lot of work left to be done. Is
bin Ladin still alive?
Director Tenet. Don't know, sir.
Senator Edwards. When is the last time we had information
indicating he was still alive?
Director Tenet. I'd be happy to talk about all of this in
closed session this afternoon.
Senator Edwards. I understand that. Is there any
information you can give us about that publicly?
Director Tenet. No, sir.
Senator Edwards. Same question about Omar.
Director Tenet. Oh, I believe he's alive, sir.
Senator Edwards. Okay. And can you give us any information
publicly about the last time we knew his whereabouts?
Director Tenet. No.
Senator Edwards. Let me switch subjects, if I can, here, to
the United States, and, Mr. Watson, let me direct these
questions to you. What information can you give us publicly
about the presence of al-Qa'ida cells here within the United
States and the extent to which you believe we are able to
monitor their activity here, without giving away any
information.
Mr. Watson. Sure, and I'm sure we'll talk about this in
closed a little more.
Senator Edwards. Yes.
Mr. Watson. There are hundreds of investigations that we
have open. I'll comment on that. An interesting point that
Senator Shelby raised, I probably should address is, you know,
of the 19, the commonalities that we saw in that, a key point
to remember is, the 19 individuals all came in legally in the
U.S. Thirteen of the 19 came in real late in the process--May,
June, July of this past year.
The question I think Senate Shelby was hitting at is, why
didn't we detect any of these people? The answer is, there were
no contacts with anybody we were looking at inside the United
States.
If they needed a driver's license, they paid somebody $50
to $100 to do it. And there's a whole set of commonalities,
which I'll be glad to talk to you about in the closed session.
But the answer to your question is, there's an ongoing,
very active program of identifying individuals and where these
individuals come from. Where we get those leads are from the
CIA and from the DIA, document exploitation in Afghanistan.
There's a whole myriad of things that happen under this
program.
And back to Mr. Tenet's statement, George's statement,
quite honestly, with zero contact in the United States of any
of our known people with the 19 individuals coming here that we
had no information about, intelligence-wise, prior to, through
no one's fault, that's how they did it.
Senator Edwards. Can you, without disclosing anything that
would in any way hinder your investigation, can you tell us
whether, yes or no, are there al-Qa'ida cells operating within
the United States today?
Mr. Watson. I think I'll hold that conversation to the
closed hearing. There are individuals, obviously, that I
mentioned. Are there core cells like the 19? Have we identified
anybody that carries the commonalities of the 19? No, not at
this process. But if you go back and look at the figures--and I
know I'm on your clock, and I'll be real quick about it--if you
go back and look the commonalities of the age of the 19, how
many of those individuals have come in from the countries that
the 19 were from--Saudi Arabia, UAE, Lebanon and Egypt--you
have, since December 31st of 1999, you have over 70,000
individuals that have entered the United States under that
category. So it's a huge, huge problem, and I look forward to
talking to you some more about those numbers.
Senator Edwards. Okay. If I can broaden that question--and
again, limit this to what you're able to say publicly, please--
Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas cells within the United States?
Mr. Watson. Presence in the United States? Absolutely.
Senator Edwards. They all have cells within the United
States?
Mr. Watson. Yes.
Senator Edwards. Can you tell us anything, without giving
us any details, of the pervasiveness of their presence?
Mr. Watson. No. No, sir, I cannot. No.
Senator Edwards. But that is something you'll be able to
tell us later?
Mr. Watson. Yes, sir. I'll be glad to talk to you about
that.
Senator Edwards. Okay. Let me switch subjects. I've been
concerned, and in fact I've introduced legislation on this
issue, about the possibility and the potential threat of
cyberterrorism. What I'd like, if you would, is to have you
address that issue, tell me what you're doing, first starting
with how serious is the threat, what is the potential damage
from cyberterrorism, and third, what are you doing, and are you
working with private business to address that problem?
Mr. Watson. Sure. First of all, there is a real threat from
the cyber arena. We have the National Infrastructure Protection
Center set up. It's not owned by the FBI. It's a community
center where we've brought down people from DOD and----
Senator Edwards. Okay, I don't mean to interrupt you, but
tell us first how serious the threat is and what the potential
damage is.
Mr. Watson. The threat, as we have seen in the al-Qa'ida
investigations and in terrorism investigations and across the
board in criminal investigations, the threat posed by cyber on
being able to transmit information, communicate with each other
is absolute. And that's the wave of the future. If you're
talking specifically, Senator, about the infrastructure and can
someone attack the infrastructure through the cyber means, they
have the capability, and that's why we put so much time and
effort as a community on this.
Senator Edwards. And what's the potential for harm if they
were successful at doing that?
Mr. Watson. Sure. A couple of incidents might be if--and
these are truly made-up stories here, but what if the FARC
decided that for whatever reason they wanted to change U.S.
government policy about cocaine spraying or in the drug arena,
and they had the capability of saying, if you don't stop that,
then we're going to turn all the lights off down in the state
of Florida, or we're going to disrupt the power to the
northeast part of the United States. That's a threat of the
cyber. What if--and I know my time's short here.
But on the defensive side--and if you think about that for
a second--and I know this is an open hearing--that is a
tremendous threat. We need the capability to be able to
understand that and be able to counter that threat. Just real
quick on the statistics: 1,200 cases of our National
Infrastructure Protection Center last year, over 55 percent had
ISPs involved outside the United States.
Senator Edwards. Good.
Very quickly, Mr. Chairman.
Director Tenet, you're shaking your head. You obviously
agree with that, you consider this a serious threat.
Director Tenet. Yes, sir.
Senator Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First question, I wanted to begin with you, Mr. Tenet, if I
could. What is your view of the degree to which the Saudis have
cooperated in identifying and capturing suspected terrorists?
Director Tenet. Well, sir, I'll give you a short answer and
would be pleased to talk about this at length in closed
session, but I would tell you that since September 11 we have
had excellent cooperation in this regard. And I don't want to
go beyond that here.
Senator Wyden. Can you tell us--and again, I understand the
sensitivity in a public session--whether you think that they
are moving to deal with the font of terror, these various
religious schools that provide the cadre for terror groups?
Director Tenet. Sir, I'd like to talk about all that in
closed session, thank you.
Senator Wyden. All right. Cuba is still listed by the
administration as a state sponsor of terrorism. Would you give
us an example, in your view, of how Cuba currently sponsors
terrorism?
Mr. Watson. From law enforcement's perspective, Cuba
certainly harbors a lot of fugitives and individuals that we
still are concerned with, particularly the Puerto Rican issue
and some other big-time individuals that have been convicted of
terrorist crimes.
Mr. Ford. My staff also suggests in the answer to the
question in my book that there are 20 ETA members in Cuba, and
they provide some degree of safe haven and support to the
Colombian FARC and ELN groups. Bogota is aware of this
arrangement; apparently it does not object.
Cuban spokesmen revealed in August that Sinn Fein's
official representative for Cuba and Latin America, who was one
of the three Provisional IRA members arrested in Colombia on
suspicion of providing explosives training to the FARC, have
been based in Cuba for five years. Some U.S. fugitives continue
to live on the island.
Senator Wyden. What can you tell us, again given the fact
that this is a public session, about what is being done to
address these threats that you describe?
[Pause.]
Senator Wyden. Sounds like everybody's tripping over
themselves to answer.
Director Tenet. I don't have an answer, sir.
Mr. Watson. On the law enforcement, on the fugitive side,
in public I'd rather not say what we're doing at this point in
time. But we're certainly working with the intelligence
community.
Senator Wyden. Is there anything else to be said with
respect to how we're dealing with this in public?
Director Tenet. No, sir, I don't think so.
Senator Wyden. All right. We'll ask about that in private.
Senator Roberts. Will the senator yield? I'm over here.
Chairman Graham. Senator Roberts.
Senator Wyden. I'd be happy to yield to a Kansan.
Senator Roberts. One of the questions that I had was does
the intelligence community believe that the resumption of U.S.
trade with Cuba could hasten the economic and political reform
in Cuba, given the fact that Castro is 77 years old, and that
when he passes from the scene--and I was not aware until your
commentary that in terms of state-sponsored terrorism that they
were exporting terrorism, certainly to the degree that they
were before when they were getting, what, $2 billion from the
Soviet Union. But post-Castro with a drug cartel taking over
Cuba poses, to me, a greater national security problem.
And I'm wondering about your assessment in regards to trade
with Cuba so you can hang your hat on getting some kind of an
entrepreneurial peg down there so that we can make some
progress.
Chairman Graham. Senator, could I ask you to hold that
question? I think Senator Wyden had a final question he wanted
to ask.
Senator Wyden. I did have one last question. With your
leave, Mr. Chairman, if we could get an answer to Senator
Roberts, and then I can ask one additional one.
Chairman Graham. Certainly----
Senator Roberts. I'm sorry for taking your time, Ron.
Senator Wyden. Not at all.
Director Tenet. Senator, can I take that for the record? I
don't have an answer off the top of my head.
Senator Roberts. Certainly. Thank you.
Senator Wyden. The last question I had deals with
technology. I think this would be appropriate for you, Director
Tenet. My sense is right now if you look at In-Q-Tel, if you
look at the Department of Defense, if you look at the various
agencies, we're now having the federal government flooded with
vendors and products and a variety of ideas for how to combat
terrorism. It is all very constructive. I think we welcome it.
And I've read publicly what In-Q-Tel has been trying to do, and
I think it's clearly a step in the right direction. But there
doesn't seem to be much of a process for evaluating the merits
of these various and sundry technologies.
I'm working on legislation now that would establish a
national testbed that would allow us, in one place, to look at
these various products for potential intelligence-gathering and
information-sharing technologies.
We've been pleased at the general comments that you all
have made about this idea. I would just like to get a statement
in the public domain here whether you think that that is
generally a sensible idea to have one place, a national testbed
where these products could be examined?
Director Tenet. I haven't thought about it. It makes sense.
I think that with In-Q-Tel, though, I mean, it's a very focused
effort. And we do identify very specific problems and very
specific solutions that we've migrated to us, at CIA, when I
say ``us,'' and we're also trying to expand this to other
elements of the intelligence community. I mean, unclassified
environment, you know, access to people and technologies we
would never otherwise see; great ability to sort of really get
into a world that otherwise would not be open to us. And the
technology is applicable to all kinds of problems.
So we feel that it's been very successful as a model. But
certainly, sir, some centralized testbed may be, you know,
helpful to all.
Mr. Watson. Senator, I think that would be very helpful in
the fact that there are departments and agencies within the
federal government that cannot communicate electronically, have
different systems. And certainly in the information-sharing
world, which we're moving into, it would certainly be very
beneficial.
Senator Wyden. We will have draft legislation to show you
with respect to this process of testing for technology. I do
think In-Q- Tel is on to some very important initiatives. One
of the things that triggered my interest in this is that
they've said that they have really been at a loss as to try to
figure out how to evaluate all these products.
We'll show you the legislation in draft form shortly.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Wilson. Senator, I do want to mention, in Defense
we have the C4ISR battle lab in Suffolk, where we try to
integrate the best ideas in the Joint Task Force commander and,
you know, war- fighting setting; the Joint Interoperability
Test Center, which does the same, technically make sure things
interoperate.
So certainly it's been a long-term challenge for us, and we
have some steps that are important going in the direction
you're talking about. It may not be national, but they may be
built on.
Senator Wyden. Well, you all have worked very closely with
us. Dr. Wenegar testified yesterday. My concern is you've got
20 agencies now that are working in areas, for example, like
bioterrorism. I've been concerned that you if you have a
bioterror attack in a givencommunity it's not possible today to
get in one place a list of experts who can assist with this. And what
you have, essentially, are all of these agencies proceeding with their
own kinds of rules. We'd like to bring this together in one place.
The Administration's been very cooperative in terms of
working with us. We'll show you the draft legislation shortly.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you, Senator. Senator Rockefeller.
Senator Rockefeller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A question for Mr. Watson. You know, when we talk about the
sort of al-Qa'ida and we talk about the White Aryan Nation, we
talk about different groups that are terrorists or capable of
doing terrorism, we tend to divide them into categories. And
I've never heard anybody address whether or not there is any
interaction, either within our country or internationally,
among those groups. Now granted, the White Aryan Nation
probably doesn't have a very large role in Saudi Arabia, let's
say. But what about the whole concept of terrorist groups,
potential terrorist groups, cooperating.--I mean, we have
groups in our own country that are organized in 34 states, and
you know the one I'm talking about. My question is, is there
any interaction among these types of groups on the national
level and, to whatever extent Director Tenet can tell
internationally.
Mr. Watson. Specific communications, we do see some
interaction and communications between groups. But with the
explosion of the Internet, we certainly see white supremacist
groups in contact with people in Europe, particularly in
Germany, et cetera.
We see on the terrorism, on the international terrorism
front, we see people here and overseas communicating mainly via
the Internet and talking back and forth and communicating that
way. Again, we get--we the FBI--a lot of people come in and say
you've got an individual down in West Virginia or Houston,
Texas, that's complaining against the regime of government. And
these are friends of ours. And we have to look at that and take
a look at it, and that's something that's protected under the
Constitution.
But there are groups that do communicate. We see more and
more of that. I don't think you were here when we were talking
about the cyber-threat, but that is a real area--a growth area,
and we'll see more of that.
Senator Rockefeller. So there's not direct communication
vis-a-vis higher-ups or middle-level types getting together and
talking, but they use third-party, i.e. the cyber world, in
order to do their communicating. But is it communicating of a
planning nature, or is it just keeping in touch?
Mr. Watson. I'm sure we'll talk about this in the closed
sessions. There are a lot of indicators and key things we look
at as well as the intelligence community about codes, et
cetera. I mean, what are they talking about, what does this
mean.
And the Agency has done a great job. The CIA has done a
great job of trying to figure out what they're talking about,
if they're talking about key words. They do communicate
electronically. And I don't want to mislead you in any way to
say they do not. But they do.
Senator Rockefeller. Director Tenet, there's always the
talk of our coalition. I made a trip recently to the Middle
East, and I kept bringing up the subject of Iraq. And I did
that provocatively in order to elicit response. And always the
question of the power of the coalition or the disintegration of
the coalition was brought up in stronger or weaker terms.
But is that not something that we can assume? For me, I'm
looking at 20, 25, 30 years of this. And isn't it probable that
as we look at coalitions we cannot assume that they're going to
sort of stay stable, but that they're going to ebb and flow,
that some countries will wander off, that Saudi Arabia may come
close to not being particularly friendly to us, maybe perhaps
not breaking relations or anything of that sort. But then in
two or three years, a series of events could happen, perhaps
within that country or whatever, which would bring the
coalition back into another form.
So it's an ebb and flow type situation, and we shouldn't
try to measure the power of our effort always according to the
aggregate sum of whatever value you attach to a coalition?
Director Tenet. No, I agree with that. I think the other
thing, particularly in that part of the world, is, as you
probably--you got a private message and a public message. And
you always see two forms. But I think in isolation, without
knowledge about what you're thinking, I mean, everybody is very
careful.
You're correct. I mean, when you lead, everybody follows.
Nothing ensures coalition success like success. And so the
replication of--particularly in the war on terrorism. Iraq may
be a separable issue, but there's nothing that succeeds in
coalescing people when they see progress being made and real
results and real will to pursue whatever policy objective you
set out. It's when you get into the stage of languish and other
things start to undermine what the original focus was that
things start to drift away from you.
So that focus and leadership brings people to you. And you
should always start from the perspective of--and this is a
policy issue; I shouldn't be talking about it--what my
leadership means in bringing everybody to me rather than
worrying about it from the other side.
Senator Rockefeller. So another way of putting that is the
word unilateralism is used sometimes. And I'm not asking for a
comment at this point, but the point is that if a country is
showing absolute resolve, that that has an effect on what it is
that countries who may be somewhat more on the fence or are
somewhat worried will, in fact, choose to do with respect to
how they coalesce.
Director Tenet. Absolutely. And it also has an impact on
others whose behavior you're seeking to modify at any moment in
time, because that success, they have to be mindful of it. They
have to look at the power of your operations and your policy.
So that kind of success also has an impact on behavior you want
to change someplace else. So it should not be underestimated.
Senator Rockefeller. Thank you.
Vice Chairman Shelby [presiding]. The U.S., as we all know,
has accomplished something extraordinary with its military
operation in Afghanistan, clearly in ways and with capabilities
that no other country can match, at least today. How will our
successes to date affect other countries' assessments of our
role in the world and their relationship to us? And Director
Tenet, especially how will such assessments perhaps affect our
military intelligence relationship with other nations?
Director Tenet. I think that all of these relationships
will be affected very positively and powerfully by what we've
done.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Out of respect?
Director Tenet. Yes, but they also have seen the power of
information-sharing, coalition warfighting, intelligence-
sharing. They've seen benefits. And quite frankly--we can talk
about this in closed session--the Afghan scenario has
revolutionized modern warfare just in terms of technology and
its application and the mating of human capabilities on the
ground and Special Forces and your air war.
Vice Chairman Shelby. The ability to project force too.
Director Tenet. There are lots of interesting lessons here
that we're all obviously going to study. It never gets applied
in the same way in the next place or other places, but I think
it's had a powerful impact.
Vice Chairman Shelby. But it's these positive lessons
learned, isn't it?
Director Tenet. Oh, absolutely, sir.
Admiral Wilson. There's certainly multiple consumers out
there that watch our military and intelligence community act,
and they think of ways to fight the next war as well. And so we
must not rest on the laurels of precision strike and all that
stuff, but continue to move through and analyze and understand
how our strengths can actually be used as weaknesses.
The other thing is, I think there is some concern expressed
by even friends about the widening gap between the U.S.
military capability and their own, and that we can do the heavy
lifting and then they're in the peacekeeping and the mud and
slug and all of that.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Heavy lifting--you mean project force
and----
Admiral Wilson. We have the ability to do--it's a widening
gap in military capabilities, and so, as we continue to build
coalitions, we need to work hard to capitalize on military,
political, intelligence coalitions that can work well together.
Vice Chairman Shelby. To go to another area that the
Director and I have worked together on over the years, that's
leaks. The security of our intelligence activities in the fight
that we're in is clearly a great concern to the President, to
the Secretary of Defense, and, I know, to you, Director Tenet,
and the FBI Director. All of you have spoken out against leaks
of classified information. How damaging have such public
revelations been to the intelligence community's efforts,
Director Tenet?
Director Tenet. Well, sir, I think you know what I'm going
to say here.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Yes.
Director Tenet. But I mean, I think that----
Vice Chairman Shelby. Well, we're going into a classified
hearing later.
Director Tenet. Yes. I just need to reinforce that when you
throw this information out, it often appears innocuous to
someone who's leaking information. That's not the prism to look
at it in. It's the adversary's counterintelligence capability--
--
Vice Chairman Shelby. That's right.
Director Tenet [continuing]. And his ability to put
together the pieces of the puzzle that put at risk your human
operations, your technical operations, your analytical
products, and jeopardizes investment that we've made to protect
the American people.
Vice Chairman Shelby. It's a problem, isn't it?
Director Tenet. It continues to be a problem, sir.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Mr. Watson.
Mr. Watson. I absolutely agree.
Vice Chairman Shelby. On behalf of the bureau. Go ahead.
Mr. Watson. Yes, absolutely, and it limits our ability to
obtain additional information, because people are real leery
about providing information if they think that's going to get
found out.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Compromised, you say. Admiral Wilson.
Admiral Wilson. I think it could be devastating.
Vice Chairman Shelby. And it has at times, hasn't it?
Admiral Wilson. To sources and methods.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Mr. Ford.
Mr. Ford. I couldn't agree more.
Vice Chairman Shelby. We have a vote on the floor. Of
course, Senator Graham, the Chairman, has gone to vote. So I'm
going to need to vote. I'm not going to adjourn this Committee,
because Senator Graham's coming back. We'll stand in recess
till Senator Graham comes back. Is that okay?
Director Tenet. Yes, sir.
Vice Chairman Shelby. Thank you.
[Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.]
Chairman Graham [presiding]. The hearing will reconvene. We
are in the midst of one vote, and there'll be another vote
following immediately. So we'll probably just have a few more
minutes of questioning and then we'll adjourn until 3:30 this
afternoon, when we'll reconvene in closed session.
The issue that I'm interested in pursuing is, what are some
of the lessons that we learned on September 11, and how are we
applying actions against those lessons? In my first round, I
asked about the question of deterrence, based on the
information that apparently Usama bin Ladin did not believe
that we were committed to retaliating, and therefore, that he
could take the actions that he did with a sense of impunity.
And I'm going to be interested in closed session in pursuing
further what we're doing to communicate to other terrorist
organizationsand nations which might harbor terrorists or
provide them with advanced means of weapons of mass destruction, so
that they do not make the same mistake that bin Ladin did relative to
what our intentions would be.
A second area that has been mentioned is the fact that
terrorists crossed our national borders and gained entry to the
United States fairly easily. I was surprised to learn that if a
U.S. consular office with someone standing in front of them
requesting a visa wanted to know what was the criminal
background of that individual or if that individual had a
criminal background, that, insofar as Interpol is concerned--
the international police organization--that for about half the
countries in the world, many of the countries that we would be
most concerned about, there is no capability of providing that
information.
What steps have we taken or would you recommend that we
should take at every step in the process of a person gaining
entry to the United States, such as the grant of a visa,
screening at the point of entry into the United States that
would harden our boarders against entry by potential
terrorists?
Mr. Ford. Mr. Chairman, there is, as you know, a number of
mechanisms already in place through the consular service,
through the visa process, through an office in my bureau, which
we call TIPOFF. And it's a community resource that provides a
list of both known terrorists and also, in some cases,
international organized crime figures. This status is supplied
by liaison services, by CIA, by FBI, DEA--whoever--so that each
of our consular posts has an electronic hookup with our
database, that when someone on our list shows up, it doesn't
always tell them what the problem is, but it says you don't
give a visa to this person unless you check with Washington
first. And then we can provide them with the information.
Chairman Graham. Was that system in effect prior to
September the 11th?
Mr. Ford. It was.
Chairman Graham. All right.
Mr. Ford. So that, obviously, it's not foolproof. If you
have not been picked up as a bad actor by one of our law
enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies or one of our ally
or friend's agencies, you won't be on the list. You also can
have an alias. And you have to balance that in terms of, one,
both the economic and other interests that people all over the
world have in traveling to the United States. The sheer numbers
of people that go through the process, I find staggering. And
secondly, there are a lot of countries that we do not require
visas; they just simply have to have a passport. So that those
people also are very difficult to track.
Chairman Graham. But were any of the terrorists involved in
the September 11 attacks from a country where a visa was not
required?
Mr. Ford. I'll have to take that question. I don't think
so, but I'll check.
[Answer supplied for the record: The ``20th hijacker,''
Zacharias Moussaoui, entered without a visa as a French
citizen.]
Admiral Wilson. Senator, I'd like to follow this up in a
closed session about a cooperative program that we have ongoing
with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, first for
counter intelligence, but it has immense applications in this
world that we're pursuing rapidly.
Also I wanted to just comment. You mentioned about lessons
learned since September 11. And if I had to cite one thing, it
would be the value of being on the offense--the value of
getting prisoners, the value of getting documents, the value of
operating in their lairs, the value of having them move and run
and talk and all this. It gives us so much more leverage and
options than when you're purely on the defense. And so there's
a tremendous value to that. I'm not sure if the lesson's
learned, but it's a lesson reinforced.
Chairman Graham. Well, I'm going to hold the further
discussion on the immigration issue for the closed session, but
to go to the issue of value of being on the offensive, I was
interested that in the speech that he gave last week, Secretary
Rumsfeld used the term ``preemptive strikes,'' that we would be
prepared not to wait until we've been attacked, but if we saw
developments that were threatening, to move in a peremptory
manner. What are the implications of that commitment to act
peremptorily to our intelligence agencies, starting, Admiral
Wilson, to the----
Admiral Wilson. First of all, I would say that, you know,
most people think of about preemptive strikes in terms of the
military, and certainly that is one venue for attack, but I
suspect that the Secretary was talking about preemptive strike
with all of our national capability: intelligence cooperation,
security forces, financial attacks. And it's also combined with
this offense, in terms of not just being working on warning and
threat levels, but also targeting options, targeting packages,
the kind of work you have to do in the military. We talk about
preparing the battle space. So we have certainly increased
dramatically our efforts in the areas of preparing for future
attacks.
Mr. Ford. It's very difficult to go on the offensive
without having good intelligence. It's always important. But if
you're going after specific groups or individuals, whether
through law enforcement or whether it's through military action
or diplomatic pressure, you have to have the evidence, you have
to have the information to act on. And so that the pressure on
all of us has grown considerably after 9/11. We've got to get
better.
Chairman Graham. For instance, one of the things that we've
talked about that al-Qa'ida used were training grounds. They
prepared a whole cadre of people who they then placed around
the world to be ready to initiate action. And I think were not
all of the 19 hijackers graduates of one of al-Qa'ida's
training programs? That would seem to be an example of
preemptive strikes. Are we gathering intelligence on the
training facilities of other terrorist groups, and are we
preparing ourselves with the kind of military, but also other,
capabilities to peremptorily take out those training
capabilities?
Admiral Wilson. Absolutely.
Chairman Graham. Maybe that's something you'd like to
discuss in more detail in closed session.
Director Tenet. Maybe. [Laughter.]
Chairman Graham. Are there any other lessons that we have
learned from the events of September the 11th that have an
implication to our intelligence capabilities?
Mr. Watson. I think there are some things we probably
should talk about in the closed session, some other trends that
we saw as a result of the 19, Senator. Be glad to do that this
afternoon with you.
Chairman Graham. Okay.
There are some implications of what happened on September
11 that I would describe as being the over-the-horizon threats.
As an example, we know that Afghanistan had been the world's
largest producer of heroin. We destroyed a substantial amount
of warehoused heroin during our attacks, and I would doubt that
this is going to be a friendly growing season for heroin
production in Afghanistan in the year 2002. That raises the
question of will the world's supply be thus diminished, or will
there be other locations that might step forward to take a part
of the production that Afghanistan has traditionally provided?
A major heroin producer, relatively recent heroin producer,
is Colombia. What do we know about the possibility of a
significant increase in heroin production in Colombia to
replace what has previously come from Afghanistan? And if our
intelligence indicates that is in fact a possibility, what
steps can we take to deal with it?
Mr. Ford. Mr. Chairman, I'm not ready to write off so
quickly that Afghanistan will no longer be a problem for our
counternarcotics efforts.
Chairman Graham. Even in 2002, with the kind of
international presence that's going to be in there?
Admiral Wilson. I think actually I've seen some assessments
that, because there's relatively more freedom in Afghanistan
than there was under the Taliban and people are struggling
economically, that there may actually be not a change or even a
surge in heroin cultivation.
Mr. Ford. And there is also the storage of crops from
before, and that----
Chairman Graham. That's inside or outside of Afghanistan?
Mr. Ford. Inside Afghanistan.
So while I think that it will continue to be a problem, my
guess is that 2002 may be a little bit better than 2003, 2004.
But it's still a problem. But there's always someone somewhere
who seems to find a way to make up for any shortfalls,
unfortunately. There's so much money involved that people are
prepared to take almost any risk to continue to provide heroin.
We're just going to have to keep on top of it.
Director Tenet. Senator, why don't we provide you an
assessment for the record on what the Crimes and Narcotics
Center--take all these facts and put them forward to you in a
piece of analysis. I think it might be helpful.
Chairman Graham. All right. And I'm going to hold the rest
of my questions until after we reconvene at 3:30. Senator
Rockefeller, do you have any final questions?
Senator Rockefeller. I can do it later.
Chairman Graham. We're going to reconvene at 3:30 in a
closed session.
If there are no other questions, first, I would like to say
that I think one of the lessons that we've learned since
September 11 is just how good our intelligence agencies are.
The infrastructure that was in place in Central Asia that
allowed us to conduct the military operation didn't just happen
in the afternoon of September 11. It represented a vision of
where the United States would have the need to develop
information and the maintenance of an infrastructure that put
us in a position to have the information when we needed it.
The fact that the first people on the ground in Afghanistan
were intelligence officers and that the first casualty in terms
of loss of life was an intelligence officer are examples of the
dedication and courage of the men and women who represent us
through your agencies. And on behalf of the American people,
there is a deep recognition and appreciation of what you have
done.
And I recognize that much of the commentary, including some
today, has been phrased in terms of questioning what happened
or what didn't happen. But I hope that the American people
understand that those questions are being asked in the sense of
how, together, do we take a strong set of agencies and make
them even stronger in the face of the new threats that have now
become so apparent. And I want to personally express my
appreciation for your individual leadership and for the people
that you lead so effectively.
Director Tenet. Thank you, Senator.
[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the Committee adjourned.]