Hearings
Hearing Type:
Open
Location:
Full Transcript
[Senate Hearing 110-793]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-793
THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION'S STRATEGIC PLAN AND PROGRESS ON
REFORM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2007
__________
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate
----------
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
48-097 PDF WASHINGTON : 2009
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800;
DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
[Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.]
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER BOND, Missouri, Vice Chairman
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JOHN WARNER, Virginia
RON WYDEN, Oregon CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
EVAN BAYH, Indiana SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine
BILL NELSON, Florida RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
HARRY REID, Nevada, Ex Officio
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio
CARL LEVIN, Michigan, Ex Officio
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Ex Officio
----------
Andrew W. Johnson, Staff Director
Louis B. Tucker, Minority Staff Director
Kathleen P. McGhee, Chief Clerk
CONTENTS
----------
Hearing held in Washington, DC, October 23, 2007:
Statement of:
Page
Rockefeller, Hon. John D., Chairman, a U.S. Senator from West
Virginia....................................................... 1
Bond, Hon. Christopher S., Vice Chairman, a U.S. Senator from
Missouri....................................................... 4
Kean, Hon. Thomas H., former Chair, 9/11 Commission.............. 5
Hamilton, Hon. Lee H., former Vice Chair, 9/11 Commission........ 7
Prepared statement of Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton..... 9
Hulon, Willie T., Executive Assistant Director, National Security
Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation, accompanied by Philip
Mudd, Associate Executive Assistant Director, National Security
Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation........................ 26
Prepared statement........................................... 28
Supplemental material:
Los Angeles times article, ``FBI working to bolster Al Qaeda
cases,'' by Josh Meyer......................................... 41
HEARING ON THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF IN-
VESTIGATION'S STRATEGIC PLAN AND PROGRESS ON REFORM
----------
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2007
U.S. Senate,
Select Committee on Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:40 p.m., in
room SD-106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Honorable Jay
Rockefeller (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Rockefeller, Feinstein, Wyden, Mikulski,
Whitehouse, Bond, Hagel, Snowe, and Burr.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, IV, CHAIRMAN, A
U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA
Chairman Rockefeller. The hearing will come to order. I
think all of us on the Committee are extremely honored that you
two gentlemen form our first panel, just like the old days, and
you bring with you this incredible aura of the originators of
so much of our thinking of what we've tried to do since that
point. You will be our first panel. Our second panel will be
Mr. Willie Hulon--I hope I got that right, and if I didn't,
I'll apologize to him personally--and Mr. Philip Mudd, the
leaders of the FBI National Security Branch.
This branch was established in September 2005 and includes
the FBI's Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Divisions,
as well as the FBI's Director of the Intelligence and Weapons
of Mass Destruction Directorate.
Let me begin again by expressing my gratitude to Governor
Kean and Congressman Hamilton for sharing their thoughts on FBI
reform with us. Much of the reform that's taken place within
the intelligence community, in fact, and specifically the FBI,
can be traced directly to the work of the 9/11 Commission. You
both deserve an enormous amount of credit for leading that
effort. This country is indebted to both of you and obviously,
we look forward to anything you have to say. And that's all the
praise you get.
As the 9/11 Commission noted, protecting the U.S. homeland
from the next terrorist attack involves many agencies and many
institutions that have not necessarily worked together before.
And amongst the most important is the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The FBI was officially created in 1935, but its
origins can be traced back to 1908 when, as the Bureau of
Intelligence, it was authorized to collect foreign
intelligence, counterintelligence, and criminal intelligence in
the United States. I recount this fact to reiterate that, while
the FBI is known as the best crime fighting organization in the
world, it is always had, in a sense, an intelligence function
as part of its overall mission.
We are here today to assess that part of the FBI's mission.
This hearing will examine whether or not the FBI has the
necessary vision and planning capability to truly transform the
FBI into the intelligence-driven organization our country needs
to prevent the next attack on our soil, if there is to be one.
To be blunt, from this person's perspective, I'm concerned
about the FBI's capacity for internal reform.
In an opening hearing in January of this year, I stated
that I was troubled that, more than 5 years after 9/11, the FBI
was only just advancing a few key reforms. Nine months later, I
still have serious reservations. The FBI's track record on the
pace of reform is not good.
In 1993, after the World Trade bombing, FBI Director Louis
Freeh stated solving terrorist problems was not enough. It is
equally important, he said, that the FBI thwart terrorism
before such acts occur. According to the 9/11 Commission
report, Director Freeh's statement was not accompanied by any
significant shift of resources to counterterrorism or greater
focus on intelligence matters--talking, doing--instead of FBI
field offices often reprogramming counterterrorism funds for
others--that's what they did; they'd shift that money and it
went to other places. Five years later, in 1998, and then again
in 1999, the FBI launched new reforms to enhance its
intelligence programs.
After the U.S. embassy bombings in West Africa in 1998, the
FBI developed a 5-year strategic plan and designated
counterterrorism as its number one priority. The plan
``mandated a stronger intelligence collection effort, called
for a nationwide automated system to facilitate information
collection, analysis and dissemination, and envisioned the
creation of a professional intelligence cadre of experienced
and trained agents and analysts.''
In 1999, the FBI launched a second round of reforms.
According to the WMD Commission, both 1999 and 1998, those
attempts failed. In 2000, after the United States thwarted the
potential plot on the Los Angeles airport, the FBI engaged in
its third intelligence reform in 3 years, this one called
MAXCAP 05, and was supposed to maximize the FBI's counter-
terrorism capability by the year 2005. One year later, a formal
assessment of that effort found that little progress had been
made.
It has been nearly 10 years since the FBI designated
counterterrorism as its number one priority, yet the most
significant changes at the FBI in the last 5 years--the
establishment of a dedicated intelligence service and the
establishment of the National Security Branch--have not come
internally from the FBI but from the recommendations of outside
commissions.
To be fair, other less dramatic changes do show promise.
The expansion of the FBI joint terrorism task forces from less
than 35, before 9/11 to more than 100 today, shows that the FBI
takes seriously its role in expanding access to information and
leveraging state and local resources in the fight against
terrorism. Two, the establishment of field intelligence groups
in FBI field offices is a definite sign the FBI recognizes the
need to collect and analyze intelligence at the field office
level. Three, the FBI's domain management initiative, which
encourages FBI field offices to proactively identify threats
and information gaps in their region, has great potential to
focus field offices on intelligence collection and the
identification of unknown threats.
Nonetheless, these programs remain works in progress.
Furthermore, from my vantage point, these changes have been
very incremental and not the revolutionary type of change
required to address the terrorist threat that we face today.
So, there are big questions for us to address this afternoon.
Does the DNI have enough authority over FBI intelligence
programs? Is the FBI developing the analytical capacity it
needs to understand and address threats? Has the FBI acquired
or developed information technology tools appropriate for their
mission? And how is the FBI engaging in long-range strategic
planning and using change management techniques to ensure the
reforms planned at FBI headquarters extend throughout the
entire organization.
So, we look forward to our distinguished witnesses
providing us with these insights.
Mr. Vice Chairman, I apologize, but just before I turn to
you for your thoughts on this important issue, this Committee--
I want this said loudly and clearly--takes oversight very
seriously. We have been massively frustrated recently, less so
with us, the two of us and our Committee working together. Our
Members share the burden and the privilege of ensuring our
Intelligence Committee is operating legally, effectively, and
efficiently, and we're really the only ones who can do it. Are
we doing a good enough job? Probably not. I've been
disappointed with the cooperation of the Committee receiving
information from the FBI in preparing for this hearing.
In June, our Committee requested--and this is a long time
ago--our Committee requested several unclassified FBI reports
relating to today's hearing. Three weeks ago, I discussed the
matter directly with Director Mueller. The Committee finally
received the reports last Friday, which is called two business
days before this hearing. Now, you can make too much or too
little of that, but this lack of cooperation in acquiring
information for this hearing is representative to this Senator
of an overall poor record of FBI cooperation on Committee
requests for information.
This is not exclusive to the FBI, but it stands out with
them. The FBI regularly fails to fully brief the Committee on
intelligence related to terrorism in the United States, citing
Department of Justice prohibitions.
Without this information, Committee Members and staff are
unable to carry out effective oversight and properly assess the
terrorist threat within the U.S. homeland. And without such
briefings, the Committee is unable to assess what sensitive
intelligence tools the Committee authorizes are most useful and
whether or not domestic intelligence and counterterrorism
agencies like the FBI are evolving to meet current and future
threats and environment.
Cooperation with this Committee must improve. It absolutely
must. An agency engaged in true reform, I believe, would
welcome oversight, not avoid it. The Committee has a deep
respect for the work of the FBI, especially those on the front
lines in the fight against terrorism. Our country is grateful
for their work and aware of their sacrifices.
This hearing today is about ensuring that we have the best
domestic intelligence possible to meet changing threat
environment that we face today, and to do so we must have a
free flow of information between the FBI and us.
With that, I turn the microphone over to my esteemed
distinguished, as I often say, vice president, Senator Bond.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, VICE CHAIRMAN, A
U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSOURI
Vice Chairman Bond. My sincere thanks to our estimable
Chairman and leader. I join in the welcome of the witnesses and
thanks for taking time from your busy schedules to be here. The
main issue we're talking about today really is the FBI
corporate culture. Has the FBI, in your view, been able to bend
its law enforcement culture to do what is necessary
successfully to perform an intelligence role? That's our focus,
and I'd really like to hear your views and thoughts on that.
Now, obviously we know the end goal shouldn't be the
complete transformation of the FBI into an intelligence agency.
The Bureau has to continue to provide its unique and
unparalleled law enforcement capabilities to the Nation on
issues ranging from terrorism to organized crime to kidnapping.
The FBI has to remain at its core a law enforcement agency.
Now, we in Congress, of course, send mixed messages about what
we want the FBI to be. As soon as the Intelligence Committee
finishes berating the FBI witnesses for not moving fast enough
on intelligence reform, the Judiciary Committee takes over and
berates them for not paying enough attention to kidnappings and
violent crime--a difficult hand to play.
I must remind our Members, however, on this hearing that
since this is an open hearing we'll not be able to get into any
particularly sensitive areas concerning the FBI strategic plan,
as you don't want to divulge the details to those who might be
targeted by the FBI. Nevertheless, there is plenty I think we
can cover in an open session concerning the FBI's culture and
its need for transformation with respect to the new form of its
intelligence mission, and our witnesses, particularly good
friends Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton will have--to
me--very interesting testimony on the corporate culture of the
FBI, and I look forward to discussing whether intelligence and
law enforcement are ultimately compatible at the FBI.
Corporate culture's not always a bad thing. Excellent FBI
record over decades, serving our Nation, enforcing our nation's
laws against organized crime and bank robberies, and the
decades of experience and procedures that the FBI has developed
make it successful, and they are built into the DNA. It seems
that whatever successes we achieve in bending the FBI to an
intelligence role might regrettably come at the cost in moving
the FBI away from its ability to address the law enforcement
issues, unless we can find an appropriate organizational
response. Therefore, I'm particularly interested in the
thoughts of our witnesses.
Terrorism is, of course, a significant threat to our Nation
and we count on the FBI to do everything it can to detect,
deter, and prevent attacks. Intelligence operations at the FBI
and in many other corners of our Government play a critical
role in fighting terrorism, but there's an important law
enforcement component as well. Our Nation depends on the FBI's
law enforcement activities here at home. Again, we must
carefully avoid unnecessarily diminishing that capability. I've
heard Director Mueller say that at times there can be a
disconnect regarding appropriations to the FBI insofar as the
funding that comes, or should come through the National
Intelligence Program, or the NIP, and what congressional
Committees address that. This disconnect with appropriations is
another area our witnesses have experience and have some good
thoughts for.
Both Congressman Hamilton and Governor Kean, in their lead
roles on the 9/11 Commission made strong recommendations as to
congressional oversight which is, frankly, an area that
Congress has done far too little in, and I'm especially
concerned about trying to assure that the Intelligence
Committee, with the specialized staff, the extraordinary amount
of time that Members spend on this Committee working on
intelligence issues have some input and participation in the
appropriations process.
As Governor, Tom and I used to produce State of the Union
messages, and if you were smart, you wouldn't listen to the
State of the Union messages. You'd listen to the budget
messages because the budget messages tell you what's going to
happen. That's where you make things happen.
I understand that Congressman Hamilton is going to be back
for an open hearing in a few weeks on this topic. Governor
Kean, I understand you won't be able to attend, so I hope
you'll share with us today your thoughts on that. This is too
important an area to leave alone, and my fellow Members of the
Appropriations Committee, Senators Mikulski and Feinstein, I
believe we can say we believe it's very important, and we look
forward to hearing your comments.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, I think it's probably time that
we actually listen to the witnesses.
Chairman Rockefeller. Good suggestion, and we will start as
we properly should with Chairman Kean.
STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS H. KEAN, FORMER CHAIR, 9/11
COMMISSION, ACCOMPANIED BY HON. LEE H. HAMILTON, FORMER VICE
CHAIR, 9/11 COMMISSION
Governor Kean. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman,
distinguished Members of the Select Committee on Intelligence,
it's an honor to appear before you today on the subject of FBI
reform. Now, we want to be as helpful as we can as you carry
out your important oversight work in the weeks and the months
ahead. We want to make just a few points this afternoon and
then turn to your questions.
First, successful reform of institutions of Government
requires the strongest oversight on behalf of Congress. Reform
is a long, hard road. Crises distract, attention wavers, senior
officials are pulled in a hundred different directions. The
executive branch cannot carry out difficult reforms on its own.
It has to have the interest and the support of this Committee.
When the Congress is watching, when it cares deeply about the
success of reform, the executive branch then stays focused.
When oversight is robust, then the laws are faithfully
executed.
All of us understand that the FBI is going through a period
of significant change. All of us have seen block-and-line
charts of the new organizations at the FBI. But do these charts
mean anything? Are the new offices being staffed? Are the
reforms really being implemented? And these questions can only
be answered by the most careful possible oversight by the U.S.
Congress. There have been FBI abuses in the collection of data.
These include improper demands for records for Administrative
subpoenas and inaccurate data for surveillance warrants. These
abuses have been acknowledged by the FBI, but they've gone on
for a long time. Who watches the FBI? It's up to the Congress
to ensure that these abuses are corrected. Congress must
provide the oversight.
Second, if fighting terrorism is now the highest priority
of the FBI, then the role of analysis at the FBI must change
dramatically. Change is happening, but very, very slowly. Since
9/11, the number of intelligence analysts has doubled, yet we
find them still answering the phones. They're still seen as
support, and they're still treated as second class citizens
within the FBI. That's the reason for so much turnover.
Why does this matter? If the FBI is going to become a
terrorism prevention agency, intelligence analysis must become
the very core of its mission. Analysis determines the nature of
the threat. The nature of the threat determines the allocation
then of resources. You can't defeat terrorism by police work
alone. Those efforts must be guided and targeted by our very
best assessment of the domestic threat. That's why analysis and
individual analysts matter.
Third, we continue to be impressed with the importance of
human capital development. You can't transform the FBI into a
terrorism prevention agency unless you create the workforce to
carry out that mission. There's a world of difference between
snooping for intelligence and chasing criminals, and the
training must reflect that difference.
There is still not a good training program in place for FBI
analysts. There is still not a good career path. There are
still too few analysts who are role models, are put out there
in positions of responsibility. Counterterrorism work at the
FBI requires not only analysts, but also a wide range of
talents--surveillance teams, translators and agents who can
speak Arabic and other critical languages. The FBI does not
devote enough resources to these surveillance teams. The FBI
still has a deficit of translators. There's a deficit of
special agents who speak Arabic. Last I saw, only 33 out of
12,000 agents speak Arabic, and some of them not very well.
The FBI lacks the ability to detect and infiltrate
suspected terrorist organizations. More agents who speak
Arabic, Pashto, Urdu and other critical languages would
strengthen the ability of the FBI to plan and infiltrate
extremist groups.
It requires great efforts to recruit, hire, train and
retain a quality workforce. Human capital should be the highest
priority at the FBI. All FBI employees need to know that they
are valued members of the team. Special agents, as talented as
they are, just simply can't do it alone. Every part of the FBI
workforce is necessary to accomplish the terrorism preventive
mission.
And at this point, I'd like to turn to my colleague and
friend, Lee Hamilton.
STATEMENT OF HON. LEE H. HAMILTON, FORMER VICE CHAIR, 9/11
COMMISSION
Mr. Hamilton. Thank you very much, Governor.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, Members of the Select
Committee on Intelligence, I appreciate, along with Governor
Kean, the opportunity to be with you today. And I hope that we
can be helpful to you.
As I've looked at the problems of the FBI in the last few
years, I am impressed by how many of them are really management
problems. Time and again, when the FBI has run into trouble, it
seems to me, it has a computer system failing or, on questions
like the national security letters, the central problem really
has been a failure of management.
I think we usually think of the FBI as a law enforcement
agency and prosecuting in a court of law. Tracking down
criminals and the like has been its traditional role. But FBI
now has become a very big organization--I think about 30,000
employees, $6 billion or $7 billion budget, whatever it is. And
it has huge management responsibilities that clearly the FBI
has struggled with in the last few years. It cannot become the
first-class terrorism prevention agency that the country needs
unless it has at the top of the agency very good managers.
Everyone acknowledges the skill of the special agent.
They're critical to the future of the FBI. But under this day's
agency, the skill of the manager is just as important. You
cannot expect agents and analysts or anyone else at the FBI to
perform at the peak of their abilities unless they are trained
and supported and assisted and rewarded according to the
principles of good management. The FBI has begun all of this;
it needs to continue to bring in management talent from the
outside into its current structure.
The next point that Tom and I make is that the FBI simply
has to have more resources. I know the budget has increased, I
think maybe doubled in the last few years. The number of FBI
special agents, the intelligent analysts and the professional
support positions, however, have been static. You cannot have
terrorism prevention and law enforcement on the cheap.
I was very pleased to hear the Vice Chairman just a moment
ago emphasize--I think I quote him correctly--that at its core,
the FBI is a ``law enforcement'' agency. You don't hear that
language at the FBI today. They don't talk about that being the
core responsibly of the FBI. They see the core responsibility
today not as law enforcement, but counterterrorism.
I worry about the future of law enforcement. The Chairman I
think said that the FBI is the preeminent law enforcement
agency. It surely is, and it is so perceived by State and local
police across the country. Since 9/11 the FBI resources devoted
to criminal investigations are down some 30 percent,
prosecutions are down 30 percent, and this at a time when
violent crime in the United States is continuing to surge.
I personally oppose budget cuts in the Nation's premier law
enforcement agency. And if you're going to give them two
tasks--one to carry on intelligence and counterterrorism, and
add that onto the responsibly of law enforcement and not have
any weakening of the law enforcement responsibility--you've got
to increase their capabilities and their resources.
I know the Congress' record here has been pretty good. It
has consistently voted to increase the President's request for
the FBI. The FBI director, I think it's no secret, is very
frustrated because many of his budgets are cut back by the
Attorney General and by OMB and other actors in the budget
process. So I would encourage the Congress to continue its
efforts to see that this FBI is fully resourced with regard
both to law enforcement and to counterterrorism.
One agent said to me not too long ago--he said, we could
not prosecute an Enron case today. I don't know if that agent
is correct or not, but it makes me nervous because every day I
pick up the paper and in the business section I see a lot of
malfeasance in the financial sector. Likewise, I pick up the
paper and I see a lot of malfeasance in the public officials
section of the economy and that worries me. And I want to see
those people prosecuted. And I don't want to see the FBI
diminished in its ability to bring those prosecutions because I
think they're terribly important to the health of the Nation.
Finally, let me just say that we want to close by talking
about the FBI's vision of the future. I think it's very
important for us to get a better understanding of where is the
FBI going to be 10 years from now? I'm not sure I can answer
that question. I don't know if I have heard the FBI people
answer the question. But if you don't know where you're going
to be 10 years from now, you're not going to be providing very
effective leadership to the FBI. And so there has to be a
vision here of where this very important agency is headed--a
clear and simple vision that has to be spelled out.
What confidence can the American people have that they're
going to be safe from attack, that their criminals are going to
be prosecuted, their civil rights protected, if you don't have
a vision of where the FBI is going? The FBI has a history of
reform. I was impressed by the Chairman's recitation of it.
Reform efforts haven't always been very successful, I think.
But it has come through the 1960s and the seventies, when
we had dark days of surveillance of civil rights leaders. I can
remember, Senator, sitting in the cloakroom of the House of
Representatives and listening to Members of the House talk
about how the FBI was going after some of the most prominent
civil rights leaders in this country, and how appalled I was
that the FBI was using its skills to investigate civil rights
leaders. Some applauded it, I did not. But the FBI came out of
that and they rededicated themselves to the rule of law,
changing, I think, its reputation and the country for the
better. So I would urge you to push forward in getting the
leaders of the FBI to spell out their vision of the future of
the FBI.
This Committee is hugely important in making the FBI work
properly and I was delighted to hear the Chairman emphasize a
moment ago that you take oversight seriously because as
Governor Kean said a moment ago, I don't know where you oversee
the FBI if you don't do it right here. And that is a tremendous
public responsibility that you have.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Governor Kean and Mr. Hamilton
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Former Chair
and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, distinguished members of the
Select Committee on Intelligence: It is an honor to appear before you
today on the topic of FBI reform.
We want to be as helpful as we can, as you carry out your important
oversight work in the weeks and months ahead. We want to make just a
few points this afternoon before we turn to your questions.
congressional oversight
First, successful reform of the institutions of government requires
strong oversight by the Congress. Reform is a long and hard road:
Crises distract. Attention wavers. Senior officials are pulled in a
hundred different directions. The Executive branch cannot carry out
difficult reforms on its own. It needs the interest and support of this
Committee.
When the Congress is watching, when it cares deeply about the
success of reform, the Executive branch stays focused. When oversight
is robust, the laws are faithfully executed.
All of us understand that the FBI is going through a period of
significant change. All of us have seen the block and line charts
showing the new organization of the FBI.
--Do these charts mean anything?
--Are the new offices being staffed?
--Are reforms being implemented?
These questions can only be answered through careful oversight by
the Congress.
There have been FBI abuses in the collection of data. These include
improper demands for records through administrative subpoenas, and
inaccurate data for surveillance warrants. These abuses have been
acknowledged by the FBI, and they have gone on for a long time.
Who watches the FBI? It is up to the Congress to ensure that these
abuses are corrected. Congress must provide oversight.
intelligence analysis
Second, if fighting terrorism is the now the highest priority of
the FBI, then the role of analysts at the FBI must change dramatically.
Change is happening, but so far very slowly.
Since 9/11, the number of intelligence analysts has doubled. Yet
intelligence analysts are still answering the phones. They are still
seen as support. They are still second-class citizens within the FBI.
Why does this matter? If the FBI is going to become a terrorism
prevention agency, intelligence analysis must become the core of its
mission. Analysis determines the nature of the threat. The nature of
the threat determines the allocation of resources.
You cannot defeat terrorism by police work alone. Those efforts
must be guided and targeted by our very best assessment of the domestic
threat. That is why analysis--and the analyst--matters.
human capital development
Third, we continue to be impressed with the importance of human
capital development. You cannot transform the FBI into a terrorism
prevention agency unless you create the workforce to carry out the
mission.
There is a world of difference between snooping for intelligence
and chasing criminals--and the training must reflect that difference.
There is still not a good training program in place for FBI
analysts.
There is still not a good career path. There are too few analysts
who are role models or in positions of responsibility.
Counterterrorism work at the FBI requires not only analysts, but
also a wide range of talents: surveillance teams, translators, and
agents who can speak Arabic and other critical languages.
--The FBI does not devote enough resources to surveillance teams.
--The FBI still has a deficit of translators. It has a deficit of
special agents who speak Arabic. Only 33 out of 12,000 agents speak
Arabic--and most of them not very well.
--The FBI lacks the ability to detect and infiltrate suspect
terrorist organizations. More agents who speak Arabic, Pashto, Urdu and
other critical languages would strengthen the ability of the FBI to
plant and infiltrate extremist groups.
It requires great effort to recruit, hire, train, and retain a
quality workforce. Human capital should be a very high priority for the
FBI.
All FBI employees need to know that they are valued members of the
team. Special Agents--as talented as they are--cannot do it alone.
Every part of the FBI workforce is necessary to accomplish the
terrorism prevention mission.
management
Fourth, so many of the questions before the FBI--whether people,
hardware, or software--involve questions of management. Time and again,
when the FBI has run into trouble--whether it has been with computer
systems or with national security letters--the central problem has been
a failure of management.
The FBI cannot become the first class terrorism prevention agency
the country needs and demands, unless it has top-flight management.
Everyone recognizes that the skills of special agents are critical
to the future of the FBI. So are the skills of senior managers. You
cannot expect agents, analysts or anyone else at the FBI to perform at
their peak unless they are trained, supported, assigned, and rewarded
according to the principles of good management. The FBI has begun--and
needs to continue--to bring in management talent from outside its
current structure.
resources
Fifth, the FBI must have more resources. For the past 2 years, the
number of FBI special agent, intelligence analyst and professional
support positions has been static. You cannot have terrorism prevention
and law enforcement on the cheap.
We worry especially about the future of law enforcement. Since 9/
11, FBI resources devoted to criminal investigations are down some 30
percent. Prosecutions are down 30 percent. At a time when violent crime
in the United States continues to surge, we strongly oppose budget cuts
in the Nation's premier law enforcement organization.
Congress, to its credit, has consistently voted to increase the
President's request for the FBI. We can and simply must provide the
resources to protect our citizens against both crime and against
terrorist attack.
vision for the future
Finally, we want to close by talking about the FBI's vision for the
future. The Bureau has been in upheaval and change for the past 6
years. Change has been necessary, but the American public also needs to
know at the end of the day what all these changes mean and where they
will lead.
The FBI Director or the new Attorney General needs to spell out for
the country a clear and simple vision for the future of the FBI. What
will the FBI look like, and what will its future activities include,
and not include? What confidence can the American people have that they
will be safe from attack, and that their civil liberties and rights
will be protected?
The FBI has an important history of successful reform. It came out
of the 1960s and 1970s--dark days of surveillance of civil rights
leaders and anti-war protesters--and built itself anew. The FBI
rededicated itself to the rule of law, changing both its reputation and
our country for the better.
Now the challenge is before our leaders to spell out their vision
for the future of the FBI. We look to the Congress and to this
Committee to exercise robust oversight--to ensure that this vision
matches the needs, values and aspirations of the American people.
Thank you for your time and attention. We look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you both very much.
And I'll just, Vice Chairman Hamilton, start with your last
sentence. We do have oversight of the FBI, but only of the
intelligence component of the FBI. So it makes it very awkward
for us to put the intelligence component in perspective with
what it is that we do not have oversight over, which is the
criminal investigation and all the rest of it. And thus we
don't have a perspective. I guess I have to be a little bit
personal here, but the FBI has traditionally been run by people
of great firmness and great self-certainty. And there's nothing
that comes down more quickly through the ranks than that
characteristic.
My question to you simply is this. Over the months this
Committee has become much more familiar in our oversight
responsibilities--but just from other aspects, too--of the DNI
coming in, Admiral McConnell and the CIA and the DIA and
others. And then they'll come in informally, they'll come in
formally. We have a kind of a relationship with them which
nourishes candor and mutual trust.
We don't have that with the FBI. You know, there's the
annual threat briefing, which is one of the relatively few
times that we see the Director of the FBI. That's held in this
room--lots of very broad statements made. And so when the
Chairman was talking about the lack of languages, in 9 years
what kind of improvement, what was also in my statement, you
know, your career can depend upon what you do or don't do.
Well, that's true in the CIA and the DIA and other places.
But it seems to be truer in the FBI than in most other places.
And I think risk aversion, therefore, is more likely to be the
result. That does not lead to the kind of aggressiveness with
respect to intelligence.
The Chairman referred--or maybe it was the Vice Chairman--
referred to only a very few intelligence agents really have
been recruited compared to what is necessary, much less their
language skills.
So my question to you is, is there anything in your minds
that is different about the FBI with a suddenly--not going to
back to 1908, you know, but let's face it, up until recently--
now suddenly a bifurcated responsibility of domestic
tranquility and domestic intelligence. Why is it they can't get
a handle on that, either technologically or get enough people?
People are singing up for the CIA and the DIA and others in
greater quantities than ever before in our history, and their
quality is the highest ever. Why not the FBI?
Governor Kean. That's good question, and a difficult one.
I'm not sure I know the answer.
It is a very different agency. I mean, it was created
basically around the image of one man who was head of that
agency for longer than anybody who ever had, in my mind, of any
Government agency in history and therefore is very much of a
top-down, kick-in-the-door and- bring-people-to-justice kind of
an organization. The old FBI people still have that image of
themselves I think and their organization. And now, in trying
to transform itself in a way that's probably deeper and in a
larger way than any other intelligence organizations might have
to do it, they're into problems. And it's a problem of culture
and problems of history.
And you've seen, in the side of the agency that has to be
transformed--the one talking about counterterrorism,
basically--a tremendous turnover. I mean, people come there and
get frustrated and they leave, and then somebody else comes in.
And you can't, I don't think, effectuate the kind of change
this Committee wants and we've all been talking about since the
Commission with that kind of turnover.
And the only thing I can suggest is, because I think Mr.
Mueller's vision is correct and he talks to us and he talks to
you, it seems to me the right direction. But somehow he's got
to transform that down through the agency and that's just
happening very, very slowly. And I think it frustrates
everybody.
Mr. Hamilton. I think that, along with Governor Kean, that
there's just no doubt at all about Director Mueller making an
all-out effort to reform the FBI. He is totally committed, as I
think you all know, to the task of changing the central
function of the FBI and he's a very able Director. And he's put
an enormous amount of energy into the task. Having said that,
changing a corporate culture, as Senator Bond referred to, is
just exceedingly hard to do and particularly when you're trying
to change it from law enforcement to intelligence--domestic
intelligence. Those are two very, very different tasks.
Different skills are needed, different training is needed. And
it's not easy to change, so you have at the top of the FBI a
genuine desire to change.
To what extent that penetrates down the organization I
think is the big question. And the answer is that it's a very
mixed situation. You visit some FBI offices and they're totally
committed to the change and the direction that Director Mueller
is trying to take it, and you visit other FBI offices and other
agents and they'll say, ``Nothing doing. This is a law
enforcement agency.'' And you can't reasonably expect, I think,
to change that culture in several years' time. I think it's
going to take much longer than that. I originally was more
optimistic about it than I am now.
The second point to make with regard to this difference
with the Chairman's question is just the sheer difficulty of
the task. If you look at what the FBI is doing now, as your
staff reports have indicated, they are trying to make many,
many changes--changes in the relationship with the DNI, changes
with regard to the integration of the analyst into the system,
changes with regard to the Field Intelligence Groups and the
Joint Terrorism Task Forces, changes with regard to technology,
changes with regard to strategic planning, changes with regard
to the management structure, changes with regard to how you
deal with human resources in the FBI.
And you put all of that out in front of you as the agenda--
and that is the agenda of the FBI today--and you just see that
the task is very hard to achieve. We have to have an
appreciation of that and a certain sympathy for the difficulty
of the task.
Having said all of that, I think we come down on the side
that all of this effort has moved too slowly and not with the
urgency that we would like to see it move forward.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, sir.
The Vice Chairman.
Vice Chairman Bond. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Congressman Hamilton, following up on your point, looking
back on the 9/11 Commission recommendations, it's clear from
the Commission's report that you struggled with the issue of
whether to create a domestic intelligence agency along the
lines of the British Secret Security Service known as MI-5,
where my distant relative got so much good publicity for the
family. Reflecting on what you have seen since your
recommendation's come out, do you feel that the intelligence
and law enforcement cultures can ultimately be compatible at
the FBI, or will they always be in conflict? Do you still
prefer to see the counterintelligence and the law enforcement
agencies kept in a single entity?
Mr. Hamilton. The answer is yes. My view, at least, is
fundamentally unchanged from the time that we wrote the report.
It would be of interest for Tom and me to go and check with the
other Commissioners and see how they view it at this point. I
am frustrated, as I guess you are, with the pace of reform, but
that does not mean that we are at the point of advocacy for the
MI-5 approach. With all of the talk about MI-5, I don't think
we've examined it very carefully. I don't think we, including
myself, really understand what an MI-5 would be like in the
United States. We have a kind of romanticized idea of how it
operates over in England and think, therefore, we can shift it
over here. I don't think it's that simple.
One of the things that impresses me, Senator, is I don't
think we really have delved deeply into what an MI-5 is. I am
at the point--I know some academics have supported the MI-5 and
some other people--but I'm not at a place where I would
advocate that. I'm still on the track of saying to the Director
``you're going in the right direction; we need to help you.''
We need to do all we can to encourage that change that you're
talking about.
I also think that you are at a time when the FBI is going
through such enormous change, now, as I recited a moment ago,
that if you come along and say at the same time, ``OK, we're
going to abolish the FBI; we're going to create two
institutions, law enforcement and counterterrorism,'' that's
going to take a lot of statutory work. It's going to take all
kinds of change in the bureaucracy and you'd be 10, 15, 20
years working at it.
Vice Chairman Bond. That's not an encouraging prospect.
Mr. Hamilton. No, it's not. But look how long it takes to
make a department work well. We created the Department of
Energy back in the 1970s--I'm not here to testify on that--but
that's still a big problem. We created DHS, whenever it was, a
few years back--horrendous problems.
Vice Chairman Bond. That still isn't----
Mr. Hamilton. Still not working well. OK, you're going to
come along and create a lot more change in your FBI--I'm not
ready to go that route yet.
Vice Chairman Bond. Tom, in addition to commenting on that,
since you won't be here, I would be interested if you would
want to share any views on the problem that I mentioned,
appropriations coordination with the intelligence community,
and simply your suggestions maybe for what do we do now? What
would you urge Congress to do in all these areas we've touched
on?
Governor Kean. Well, I'd just briefly say I agree with Lee
totally on the MI-5 question. We talked about it at long length
in the Commission, even to the extent of having the head of MI-
5 come and testify before us, and we basically came to the
conclusion that the kind of effort and the kind of cost and the
time would be incredible--with no guarantee that we'd be better
off afterwards, and that therefore trying to reform an existing
organization is probably a better way to go.
As far as your other question, it was one, again, that
concerned us deeply on the Commission. We felt the success of
the new DNI, of the FBI reforms, of the whole intelligence
apparatus was very dependent on this Committee, frankly, and on
the success of your oversight. And we still believe that very
strongly. But we also know what you mentioned in your opening
remarks and what you and I both knew as Governors and you know
also here--that it's the money they pay attention to and who
has the appropriating power that really brings change. And so
we felt very, very strongly that members of this Committee had
to have a say in that appropriating process, and that if you
didn't, you were never going to be as effective as you could
and should be.
And we talked about it a lot because, as you know, the
majority of the members of the 9/11 Commission were former
Members of the Congress and a lot of them had been former
members of either this Committee or the House Committee. So
they knew the difficulties and they knew the problems. And we
all said afterwards this may be our hardest recommendation to
have implemented, but it's also, we believe, our most
important, because if Congressional oversight is really as
vastly important to the whole structure of the rest of our
intelligence apparatus as we believe it is on the Commission,
then you've simply got to have a say in the appropriating
process if you're going to be fully successful.
Vice Chairman Bond. Anything further on that Lee?
Mr. Hamilton. I obviously agree with the Commission's
report and the comments that Tom made. No effective oversight,
unless you can affect the budget. Believe you me, they've got
this figured out at the CIA and at the FBI. And they know where
the money comes from. And they know the process is so screwed
up in appropriating, in the budget, in the Congress that they
jack you around. That's what they do. They play you because the
system is so dysfunctional in the Congress and the budget
process today that what it does is permit the bureaucrats to
game the system, to go around the authorizing Committees and
deal with an Appropriation subcommittee, Defense, which doesn't
have time for intelligence because they're running a couple of
wars and have all other kinds of responsibilities. So you've
got to have the budget power.
And Mr. Chairman, when you said a moment ago--I knew this--
that you have oversight over intelligence, but not over law
enforcement, I'll give you my reaction to that. It doesn't make
any sense at all. Congress has got to get itself in shape so it
can do effective oversight. If you're going to oversight at the
FBI, you can't pick out a little part of it, or even a major
part of its work and exclude a major part of it. There is,
after all, a relationship between law enforcement and
intelligence and to just have a half oversight doesn't make any
sense to me at all.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, sir.
Senator Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
thank you both so much for your leadership, for being here, for
your continued public service; it really is appreciated.
I initially believed that the culture conversion that both
the Chairman and Vice Chairman spoke about could be
accommodated. I now am not so sure. I'm also very, very
concerned because violent crime is going up in this country; it
has become one of the lowest FBI priorities today. They have a
shortage of 1,000 agents in that area and yet we have added,
it's a classified number, but let me say it's in the billions
of dollars to create this change of culture.
I was just reading in our binders a very interesting staff
report and I want to just quickly tick off some of the things
the staff has found and asked you to respond to them.
The first is in the area of pace of reform and elevation of
analysis and new initiatives that the FBI have proposed. The
first thing: Field Intelligence Groups. They were established
in 2003 to integrate the intelligence cycle into FBI field
operations. Independent audits, SSCI--our staff--visits to
field offices in 1907 found that these groups lack clear
guidance on their mission, are poorly staffed, are led
overwhelmingly by special agents and are often surged to other
FBI priorities.
Secondly, although the number of intelligence analysts has
doubled from 2002 to 2007, the FBI continues to face
difficulties in training, managing and retaining analysts. The
DOJ Inspector General found that the professional divide
between analysts and special agents remains a problem. In 2004,
the FBI was granted the authority to obtain 24 senior
intelligence officer positions, portrayed as critical to the
FBI's intelligence mission. As of today, the FBI has hired,
according to this, only two senior intelligence officers.
In technology we all know about the imposition of the
virtual case file, after spending $170 million. Currently, the
FBI has no ability to electronically store and share images and
audio files associated with their intelligence investigations.
I mean, it's been a long time.
Headquarters staffing: The FBI has struggled to staff key
intelligence positions. In March 1907 the Committee learned
that only 60 percent of the counterterrorism supervisory
special agent positions were filled. In the headquarters
section that covers Al-Qa'ida-related cases, more than 23
percent of the supervisory special agent positions were vacant.
The FBI has received less than 3 applicants for the 20 special
agent desk officer positions, which were posted before April of
this year.
Now, the next one is senior and mid-manager turnover rates.
The Department of Justice Inspector General stated in 2007 that
senior and mid-level management turnover has definitely hurt
accountability, effectiveness, and the pace of reform. At the
senior level, the top counterterrorism position at the FBI has
been held by seven different special agents in the last 5
years.
Well, this is staff work. As you read this--and this isn't
the first year we've read it--you begin to come to the
conclusion of being a real skeptic as to whether this change in
culture, A, can be achieved and B, whether it's desirable to
try to achieve it. You know, the FBI is what it is--a great law
enforcement agency. It isn't an intelligence agency. So I am
coming to question, as we spend more and more and more every
year, whether the money is in effect being well spent.
I'd appreciate any comments you'd care to make. I think
it's all fair game.
Mr. Hamilton. My impression, Senator, as you read through
that list is I agree with it all. And I think your staff has
done a very good job in identifying the problems that the FBI
confronts.
The best you can say about the FBI at this point, it seems
to me, is it's a--and I think this phrase was used by the
Chairman, maybe--it's a work in progress. And you have to
acknowledge that it's been a rough, rocky road here and there.
Now, do you at this point say we're going down the wrong
path? I indicated a moment ago that I don't think we are. And I
would want to redouble our efforts, redouble the oversight to
achieve the kind of FBI that the Director has set out. But I
have to acknowledge it's an arguable case. You do have to think
about the consequences of going the direction you're
suggesting, which is to create--I gather--a law enforcement
agency separate from a domestic intelligence agency. I think if
you were beginning de novo--as the lawyers say--you probably
wouldn't go the direction we're going today. They're two very
different functions.
But because we have now gone down this road for 5 years,
because a lot of progress has been made--even though it's
uneven and even though it's slow--I would personally think we
ought to continue down that road for a while. And before you go
to the conclusion that we ought not to go down that road, I
think you've got to look very, very carefully at how you would
structure an MI-5 in this country.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
Governor Kean, would you respond, please.
Governor Kean. Thank you, Senator.
First of all, congratulations to your staff. I mean, that's
a first class----
Senator Feinstein. It's the Committee staff.
Governor Kean. Committee staff. That's a first-rate
compilation of the problems and the problems are very real. And
everything in there, as far as I know, is accurate.
Now, the question we always look at is what is the
alternative? And we've come to the conclusion--I think Lee and
I and other members of the Commission--that this is probably
the best we can do at this point. And what we've really got to
do is put the hammer on, in a sense, both from your Committee
and the oversight you have, the DNI--I mean, we set the DNI up
to have direct oversight. And whether that direct oversight is
occurring the way it should I think you probably know better
than I do. You can certainly ask the right questions.
But we have the tools, it would seem to me, to really
insist that the kind of thing that you all support--the
American people, I believe, support--is done by the FBI and
these deficiencies are corrected. I think Lee and both believe
you have a Director who wants to do that.
The turnover is terrible. The recruiting has not been what
it should be. I don't know all the reasons for not being able
to get--as the Chairman said--the proper people recruited. But
those are the questions. And we believe that continuing down
this path, as difficult it may be, is probably the preferable
course.
Senator Feinstein. If I could just say one quick thing--
and I thank you. The question comes: If the fish is out of
water, no matter what you want to do to give the fish wheels to
operate on land, it doesn't really work. And after these years,
and I've serve on Judiciary, so we've had the FBI oversight
meetings, and I've discussed this with Director Mueller. And
they're all, you know, they all feel they want to do it. I've
been at a convention with him when he spoke to the agents about
the change in culture. The question I have is whether it really
can be done.
Governor Kean. It's a tough, tough question after five or 6
years. We believe it's enormously difficult, but they're trying
to get it done is a better alternative right now. But it's
getting a closer and closer call.
Mr. Hamilton. I think the time and the cost and the
difficulty of the kind of transition that you're suggesting
would be, in my judgment at this time, prohibitive, with no
guarantee that what you would end up with is any better than
what we now have. That's what holds me back in going the route
you're thinking about.
And the changes that we, partly the 9/11 Commission,
recommended in the Federal Government at large--restructuring
intelligence, restructuring homeland security and a lot of
other parts of the Government--are just about all this
Government can absorb, I believe, at this time. You can
overload the reorganizational circuit.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you very much.
Senator Mikulski.
Senator Mikulski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice
Chairman.
Before I go into my----
Chairman Rockefeller. Senator, may I just----
Senator Mikulski. Yes, sir.
Chairman Rockefeller. I'm sorry. This very rude of me. The
Chairman has a 4:00 train to catch. My calculation says that
he's already missed it.
Governor Kean. Yeah, probably. I think I'm going to try to
make the 5:00. Thank you for your courtesy.
Chairman Rockefeller. OK. Excuse me.
Senator Mikulski. I appreciate it. That's the Amtrak, and
that's another topic for reorganization, revitalization,
resources. We're talking about the three Rs.
But before I go into the question and the points of the
oversight, I want to, before this Committee and all who are
watching, express both a personal and professional expression
of gratitude to Congressman Lee Hamilton for something that he
did so extraordinarily for a constituent of mine, Dr. Haleh
Esfandiari, who is at the Woodrow Wilson Center, who returned
to Iran, returned there to visit with her mother and was
arrested and placed into an Iranian prison from which she had
no access to legal representation and other things.
We all worked very hard, and I know Senator Feinstein was
engaged in this, to be able to free her. It was Congressman
Hamilton's outreach to the Ayatollah himself that was able to
free her. I'm happy to report to this Committee, as all know
from press accounts, she's back home. She's back at work. And
we can't say enough to thank Congressman Hamilton for his
wonderful work. So I just wanted to say that.
Mr. Hamilton. Thank you very much.
Senator Mikulski. And to both Governor Kean and Congressman
Hamilton, we just want to thank you for not only what you did
on the 9/11 Commission, but your steadfast oversight of what
we're doing on oversight to keep the momentum going that the
Nation asked us to be able to do after September 11, 2001.
I just want to make some comments and then get to a
question about the oversight. I chair the subcommittee that
funds the FBI. I am an unabashed appropriator. It is in that
committee called Commerce Justice Science that we have the FBI
and all other Federal law enforcement, with the exception of
Secret Service--DEA, the Marshals Service, and the Bureau of
Alcohol and Firearms.
I want to talk a minute about that. But before I do, I have
to say to Rockefeller and Bond, thank you for having this
hearing, because for a long time it was only the Appropriations
Committee after 9/11 that was looking at the FBI. This
Committee, until this past year plus, did not look at it. In
fact, I would venture to say, most of Congress did not realize
the new and stunning responsibility we gave to the FBI unless
they goofed somewhere. And so I thank Senator Rockefeller and
Senator Bond for holding this.
And what I'd like to do as part of our congressional
oversight hearing, which I'm eager to look at, is to talk about
how next year we can actually work together in terms of the
appropriations oversight. I intend at that time--because you're
exactly right, we hold one hearing with the FBI. It's open.
It's public. We can't dig in. I will intend next year, for my
Federal law enforcement, to have a public hearing and then also
a classified hearing, but that we would work with our team on
intel, because I can say this. What we appropriators have done
is, first of all, clean up the mess where they boondoggled,
like the case management system. One hundred seventy million
dollars went down the drain in a mismanaged case management
system. We're now back on track, and I know the Committee has
looked at it.
Second, we try to stop bad things from happening. The
Administration was actually moving agents out of law
enforcement--Senator Feinstein has detailed it through her
excellent staff--and put them into fighting terrorism. Well
violent crime is up, as all of you know, substantially in our
communities whether it's Indiana, New Jersey, or Maryland.
So we stopped that. We appropriators stopped that again,
working on a bipartisan basis with Senator Shelby, saying,
``Leave the FBI, who's fighting violent crime there, but we
need to have new people there.'' So that's all we've been able
to do through the appropriations process.
The second thing is MI-5. I traveled to England to see how
we were working there with this faithful ally and met with Dame
Eliza. You know how in those James Bond movies--that's the
cousin Senator Bond talks about--but Bond is Kit Bond, he's a
shaker and a stirrer, if I might add. But it was Dame Eliza who
headed up MI-5 and brought 30 years to the intelligence
experiences.
Don't create a new agency. Don't worry about new boxes and
new charts and so on. You have to do what you need to do. And
what she was concerned about is that America gets too involved
with agencies and bureaucracy, and she cautioned us on that.
And what she said was that MI-5 built up over a 50-year period
after the end of World War II, as it moved into the cold war
and other challenges that they faced.
So I would welcome that when we discuss this, Senator Bond,
in more detail, that perhaps Dame Eliza would come across the
pond and actually have maybe a roundtable visit with us and
share her knowledge.
So those are my comments. But the last--if I could go to
the issue of cultural transformation. Do you believe that one
of the areas we, both through oversight, as well as
appropriations, should do is focus on the analyst area? Because
I'm concerned not so much about the number, but as you
indicated in your testimony, that they are stepchildren, that
they're answering phones. They're doing administrative work.
They're not analyzing, which was the dots, connect the
dots, so that the agents could do what they need to do, and it
could go up the chain to other policymakers at the DNI, and
that that is one of the areas where we could make substantial
inroads if we said let the analysts be analysts, have the
translators we need, but that that particular area could be one
of the great and also a real career path for them.
Would this be one of the key--we can't focus on it all.
Would this be an area that you would recommend, or would you
have others?
Governor Kean. That's an enormously important area. I mean,
it's been said that some of the analysts feel they're being
treated as glorified secretaries. These are professionals. And
if you get them, train them and retain them----
Senator Mikulski. And there are 2,300 of them.
Governor Kean. Yes, absolutely right. The FBI cannot become
a terrorism prevention organization unless analysis and
analysts are at the core of their counterterrorism mission.
There are just too many threats out there from too many
organizations. There are too many potential targets, too many
different methods of attack.
You can't address the threats unless you can analyze them.
And analysis determines the nature of the threat. The nature of
the threat then determines the allocation of how you do your
resources. If you're going to be successful in a
counterterrorism prevention organization, the most important
function is probably that of the analysts.
And so far, I don't think the FBI really understands or
agrees with the statement I just made. Just look at the
training program, the career path for analysts, and just look
how many senior management positions they hold. Take a look at
that. That's where I think the FBI has got to make a very
fundamental change.
Senator Mikulski. Mr. Chairman, I know the clock is ticking
and my time has expired. Those other questions that I have will
be saved for the FBI themselves. Thank you.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Senator Mikulski.
And I now call on Sheldon Whitehouse.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Rockefeller. Senator Whitehouse.
Senator Whitehouse. Gentlemen, to both of you, thank you
very much for your service. As Senator Mikulski has said, it's
very impressive to me not only that you have done the report--
lots of people in Government are asked to do reports and do
very good jobs, and then they hand off the report and they go
on. You have not gone on, and I appreciate your continuing
attention to this problem.
In the final report on 9/11 Commission recommendations
dated December 5, 2005--which is about a little over 4 years of
experience after the 9/11 incident--you all evaluated the
creation of the FBI National Security Workforce and graded it
at that point at a C. How would you grade it today?
Governor Kean. I think I'd keep it about there, but I
don't--you may disagree.
Mr. Hamilton. Tom and I have steered away from grades since
that time.
I think it's fair to say progress has been made, but the
general comment here has been it's been too slow. In one area
that we have had a very special interest in--and that's weapons
of mass destruction--it just seems to me that the FBI has not
understood the consequences of that threat sufficiently, and
they've handled it on a kind of business-as-usual basis when we
think that it ought to be a very urgent priority.
I would not give them very good grades. I wouldn't even
give them a C at this point on weapons of mass destruction.
They do have a National Security Branch. That's also a work in
progress. There is a lot more attention to this surely, than
there was several years back.
I guess my feeling is that this is an area where I shift
the responsibility back to you. Very diligent oversight is
necessary to see how effective that really is.
I'll tell you what bothers me, Senator. If you talk, as I'm
sure you have, to the FBI, they'll show you a lot of charts and
a lot of boxes, and they'll tell you about the budgeting and
all the rest of it. And I don't have any doubt about their good
intentions. A lot of good conceptual work has taken place.
But what really hangs in my mind is whether it'll work. And
will it be implemented effectively? And that's a very tough
thing to make a judgment about, I believe. The only way I
really know to test the effectiveness of all of these fancy
charts is through what the military calls exercises, practice.
Senator Whitehouse. War gaming.
Mr. Hamilton. Absolutely. And I think the FBI needs to do a
lot more of that in order to persuade me, at least, that those
charts mean something.
Senator Whitehouse. On the question of congressional
oversight, you know, we can sort of peek over people's
shoulders and be an eternal scold. But unless we're focusing in
on where the problem really lies, it's not as helpful as it
could be.
And I look at the situation--you know you said in your
report, unless there's improvement in a reasonable period of
time, Congress will have to look at alternatives. And the
threat of having this taken away is a fairly serious
administrative and bureaucratic threat.
The whole question of terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction is a critical issue facing our country. These are
issues that, within the executive branch, you could probably
say they transfix the President and the Vice President. There
is no lack of White House attention to them. Significant
resources have been shifted. And yet, you know, what gives?
We can talk about the analyst track not being a successful
track. We can talk about all the turnover at the very top and
why there should be seven people in 5 or 6 years. But those
strike me as symptoms of something else, and it's trying to put
my finger on what that something else is that is bedeviling me
here as I listen to this.
Mr. Hamilton. Well, let me just mention one thing that
puzzles me. Why can't we detect nuclear materials? That was a
problem long before 9/11. That's been a problem for decades.
And we have not yet developed in this country the ability to
detect nuclear materials in containers and all the other ways
it can get into the country.
A lot of research has gone into it, and I understand some
progress has been made. But we're a long, long way from being
able to give ourselves a high percentage of assurance that all
of the things in containers that come into this country are
free of nuclear materials. And of course, what's worrisome here
is that the Usama bin Ladin/al-Qa'ida group has made it very
clear this is one of their high priorities, to get nuclear
bombs into this country.
So I'm puzzled, with all of this genius we have in the
country, that we haven't been able to solve that problem easily
in the last decade.
Senator Whitehouse. My time has expired. I thank you both.
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse.
And now, I believe, Senator Snowe----
Senator Snowe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Rockefeller. The ever patient Senator Snowe----
Senator Snowe. Thank you.
Chairman Rockefeller. [continuing.] All by herself----
Senator Snowe. You have to have patience around here----
Chairman Rockefeller [continuing.] Over there on the left.
[Laughter.]
Senator Snowe. As these two gentlemen know.
But I want to welcome you both, Governor Kean and
Congressman Hamilton. It's great to see you and not only
welcome you to this Committee, but more importantly, we thank
you for your continuing ongoing leadership and stewardship and
being the conscience of the Nation to make sure that we
continue to do what we need to do regarding the 9/11
recommendations and much more. So I really want to express my
gratitude as well to both of you.
This clearly is a very frustrating issue because I know I'm
familiar and have served on the Foreign Affairs Committee with
you, Congressman Hamilton, for many years and worked on
information-sharing, so I've certainly encountered the issues
within the FBI in resisting just sharing of information.
And, you know, we're in a transformational period, even
more so today, and we're encountering the continuing ongoing
preeminent threat, al-Qa'ida, as well as being in a war in
Iraq. So I think there is a sense of urgency. I'm concerned
that that sense of urgency isn't permeating the culture within
the FBI.
And beyond constraining the budget--which I think you're
right; I think that certainly would get their attention--what
else could we be doing to reverse the culture and establishing
a certain pace of reform for the number of issues that have
been identified here today--elevating the status of
intelligence analysts, for example, and a number of issues that
were highlighted by the Inspector General in his recent report?
You know, maybe we should establish the hiring goals and
doing all the things they've failed to do to implement the 9/11
recommendations where they have certainly demonstrated very
little progress on many of those issues.
If we think it's that important, then I think that we
should take it a step further and do what we can within the
authorization capabilities of our Committees to address these
issues and to force the change, because it is urgent. I mean,
frankly, we don't know where we are in time in terms of
experiencing another event.
So the sooner we can get this done--and I just don't see
anything across the board, to be honest with you, that would
suggest that we have turned the corner within the FBI, because
we're not elevating the status of these intelligence analysts.
And as you mentioned, Governor Kean, they're viewed as
glorified secretaries. They're not giving them the amount of
counterterrorism training, from what I can understand.
So what can we do to elevate this entire intelligence
function within the FBI? And should we take statutory steps?
Should we enact legislation to mandate specific changes in the
pace of that reform in conjunction with the vision? You have to
have the leadership. You have to have the vision. But also you
have to have a sense of urgency in establishing the deadlines
and the time lines by which it is accomplished as well.
Governor Kean. Well, I think that's a good question.
I think under the leadership of this Committee, I think you
have to make it very clear that what's going on up to this
point is unacceptable--just plain unacceptable. And perhaps you
establish goals, perhaps you establish mandates, perhaps you
say, ``We expect this to be done'' as a Committee, because
nothing in that staff report is things that shouldn't be done.
You know, 6 years after 9/11, a lot of them should have been
done a long time ago.
Again, Congressman Hamilton is right. It's not that they
haven't done some things. I mean, Director Mueller has been
kind enough to brief Lee Hamilton and me a number of times and
there's been progress, but these things that we've brought up
today aren't acceptable. A lot of them are the kinds of things
that if not addressed could lead to another terrorist attack.
And Lee, I think, is totally right when he talks about a
nuclear threat. Whether or not they're taking that--the
President of the United States on down have said that's our
biggest danger--not maybe our biggest probability--but our
biggest danger. If so, are they treating it as the biggest
danger? I mean, all those kind of questions, I think, are very
important for this Committee to ask. And maybe, as I said, some
goals, some standards, some expectations of the Committee--by a
certain date this should be done--maybe that would have an
impact.
Mr. Hamilton. As you were asking your question, Senator, I
was thinking of several areas that I would focus on if I were
sitting where you are. You began your comments with the phrase
``sharing of intelligence.'' And of course you'll remember, in
our 9/11 Commission report that was the heart of what we said
was wrong. We didn't share intelligence, and there are all
kinds of examples of that.
The key point in sharing of intelligence is how this
relationship between the FBI and the Director of National
Intelligence works. That's where the sharing has to take place.
If it doesn't take place there, it doesn't take place. And that
becomes a crucial relationship. And I would want to know a lot
more about how that relationship works. That relationship is
not going to work unless the two principals--the DNI and the
Director of the FBI--work and lead on the sharing of
information.
It has no chance of working unless those two principals are
very heavily involved. They are both essential actors in seeing
that information is shared among the 16 intelligence agencies
in this Government. And they have to build that effective
relationship. And if they don't have the right relationship
there, it isn't going to work. So I would really focus on this
business of sharing information.
Number two, I would focus on the role of the analyst,
because when we're talking about a cultural change, this is it.
The special agent occupies a position of preeminence in the
FBI. It's like a four-star general. The special agent in
charge, that is a big deal in the FBI. It always has been and
probably always should be. They're very able people and they
have enormous responsibilities.
But if your focus, as Tom was saying a moment ago, is going
to be counterterrorism, that shifts the demands of the FBI--
quite bluntly--the things that would drive the FBI from the
special agent to the analyst, because the analyst has to tell
you where the threat is and what the nature of the threat is.
And if that's your job--intelligence on threats, domestic
threats, then the analyst becomes the key player.
What that means is that the analyst cannot be secondary to
the special agent. The analyst must be at least elevated to the
special agent in money, in incentives, in retention and
training and all the rest of it. So I would focus very heavily
on that.
I would focus heavily on the IT system. Senator Mikulski
mentioned this a moment ago, 100 and whatever it was, $70
million down the tubes, we all know about that. And now they
have the Sentinel system. How is that working? Do they really
have the capabilities in the FBI to match the commercial
private sector? And if they don't have, why don't they have it,
and how quick are they going to get it? I'm very impatient
about that system because I think it really is key to better
counterintelligence work. So those are some of the things I'd
focus on.
I mentioned in my opening statement the whole question of
management. I think Director Mueller's made quite an effort to
reach out beyond the confines of the FBI to bring good managers
in. My recollection is they have a couple management studies
going on right now. I'd want to know what those studies show
and how they're going to be implemented. Those are some of the
things I'd really focus on.
Senator Snowe. Well, I appreciate that. And again, I
appreciate your efforts. Maybe it's beyond the reach of one
person. Maybe it does require more intervention on our part to
put the intelligence analysts on the same level, on an equal
level. Maybe we have to go further and start to address some of
those critical issues. And I thank you both very, very much.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Senator Snowe.
We have an additional panel, but I want to end with this
thought.
I'm going to start with something that you all said in your
report: ``Our recommendations''--and Senator Whitehouse
mentioned this in different language--``Our recommendation to
leave counterintelligence collection in the United States with
the FBI still''--underlined--``depends on an assessment that
the FBI, if it makes an all-out effort to institutionalize
change, can do the job.''
My overwhelming impression of the sort of bifurcation of
wants from this hearing is that we want the FBI to do the job,
that we have a sense that it's not doing the job, that we're
nervous about bifurcating it, MI- 5-style, and in essence that
we've brought ourselves to a halt so that our reports are
negative, which shows that we're doing a kind of a negative
oversight. It doesn't occur to me that a negative oversight's
very helpful.
So I'm going to introduce in this--as we close this first
panel--a thought, and that is that we on the Intelligence
Committee have to take responsibility, which we evidently have
not, that if others are not going to be more aggressive about
this, if we're going to wait for Director Mueller to come and
tell us what's going on, the Vice Chairman and I have all kinds
of meetings separately, but that's not necessarily for the
whole Committee--that's a whole other subject--I think we have
to take a special view toward the FBI, that we have to be much
more aggressive; we have to be more inventive, we have to be
more insistent.
We don't have any time, but so what? Maybe neither the
country has any time. We've got the two greatest threats, to
me, to our security in this country, are lassitude--that is,
what I call the homestead mentality, that we've all got our
white picket fences and everything will work out in the end
because in America it always does; and second, because the two
agencies that are most responsible for the immediate lives of
Missourians and West Virginians are the Department of Homeland
Security and the FBI, and those are the two departments with
which we have the greatest frustration, that have the greatest
budget problems, and are the most, in a sense, one because of
its complexity and the other because of its culture and
history, are impenetrable.
Well, it becomes, I think, our job on this Committee to
change that, to break that. We have to become more aggressive.
And I think that may be the way out of this very uncomfortable
bifurcation of views. Wishing them well, saying they're doing
some things good, reports that aren't very helpful or hopeful,
and I think now I'm just going to shift part of that to the
Vice Chairman and myself and we're going to do a better job.
You just watch us.
In the meantime, we thank you enormously for taking your
time. Senator Whitehouse has volunteered to pay your train
ticket----
[Laughter.]
Chairman Rockefeller. Which is important.
And we really thank you very, very much. We're enormously
proud of you. I don't know any two Americans who've done more
for this country post-9/11 than you two have. And as Senator
Whitehouse said, people make incredible reports; you two never
leave us. You prick our conscience; you drive us; you question
us just by the mere fact that you're still around. And thus you
elicit this response from me: Thank you, gentlemen.
Mr. Hamilton. Thank you very much.
Governor Kean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Vice Chairman Bond. Gentlemen, I wholeheartedly concur. You
put out a magnificent report. You come back with very
thoughtful analysis. And you've got to catch a train, so I'll
only say very briefly we would be happy to brief you on some
technologies for detecting nuclear materials that you may not
have been briefed upon.
And second, it sounds to me, Congressman Hamilton, that you
are suggesting that Congress mandate that the two top positions
in the National Security Branch might rotate between agent/
analyst and analyst/agent. Is that the kind of thing you're
saying?
Mr. Hamilton. I just say that, as it is today, I think the
analyst has to be elevated greatly within the structure of the
FBI.
Vice Chairman Bond. Thank you.
Mr. Hamilton. At least equal to the special agent in
charge.
Senator Mikulski. Mr. Chairman--not for a question, just
for a point that I'd like to say to you and the Vice Chairman
as our dear friends and colleagues leave.
This goes to cooperation with the appropriators to do the
oversight necessary. I know that the 9/11 Commission
recommended that there be a separate Committee made up of
authorizers and appropriators on intelligence. As the Chairman
knows, there was institutional hesitation on that.
Well, we can do that among ourselves. My Ranking Member,
Senator Shelby, was a former chair and vice chair of this
Committee. And I say before our friends from 9/11 Commission
and to you--and of course, Senator Bond is an appropriator--
that we want to work with you so that we can have this seamless
oversight between the authorizers and the appropriators, and we
can begin that in a matter of weeks.
Mr. Hamilton. Senator Bond, I welcome the briefing on the
nuclear detection, but I'm not satisfied until I see them in
place checking containers effectively. I've heard for a long,
long time about the research and development, and I am all for
it. But I don't see them in place working effectively yet. Ten
years at least--10 years at least we've been working on this
problem. I welcome the briefing.
Chairman Rockefeller. I thank the gentleman.
Vice Chairman Bond. We will make you an honorary show-me
Missourian even though you're a couple of States east, a good
policy.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you very much.
Governor Kean. Thank you.
Chairman Rockefeller. Both of you, thank you.
Could I call, please, the second panel, Mr. William Hulon
and Philip Mudd of the FBI's National Security Branch to come
forward. Mr. Hulon, would you care to give the opening
statement please.
STATEMENT OF WILLIE T. HULON, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL SECURITY BRANCH, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION,
ACCOMPANIED BY PHILIP MUDD, ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY BRANCH, FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION
Mr. Hulon. Yes, sir. Thank you.
Chairman Rockefeller. And thank you very much both of you
for your service and for your presence and for your patience.
Mr. Hulon. Sure. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Vice
Chairman Bond, and Members of the Committee. I am pleased to be
here today to discuss the FBI's progress in strengthening its
intelligence capabilities to protect our Nation.
Joining me are National Security Branch Associate Executive
Assistant Director Philip Mudd and Directorate of Intelligence
Assistant Director Wayne Murphy. Mr. Mudd, a career CIA
analyst, and Mr. Murphy, a career NSA analyst, are key players
on the National Security Branch management team. They both have
extensive intelligence community experience.
Since 9/11 the FBI has set about transforming itself into a
national security organization. Over the past 6 years, we have
made steady progress toward this goal. During a time of
unprecedented and revolutionary change for the FBI, we have
expanded our mission, overhauled our intelligence programs and
capabilities, improved our information sharing, and enhanced
training opportunities for our employees.
Our intelligence capabilities have evolved significantly
since early 2002, when we began developing a more robust
intelligence program. As part of these efforts, and in response
to the recommendation of the 9/11 and WMD Commissions and
others, we created a National Security Branch which integrates
the FBI's counterterrorism, counterintelligence, intelligence,
and weapons of mass destruction programs. The mission of the
National Security Branch is to lead and coordinate intelligence
efforts that drive actions to protect the United States.
In addition, over the past year the FBI has developed a
strategic plan to enhance the performance of our national
security mission. This plan has been developed using the
balanced scorecard strategic management system, a tool employed
by a number of private sector corporations, to align budget,
plans and strategy across the organization. At the same time,
we continue to receive input from a number of bodies who are
interested in the FBI's transformation efforts, including the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which has also
examined our efforts to enhance our intelligence program and
recommended ways to accelerate our efforts.
In conjunction with their recommendation, we began working
with the consulting firm of McKinsey and Company. As a result
of initiatives identified in our strategic planning efforts and
through our work with McKinsey, we have identified a number of
areas where we are able to accelerate our progress as an
organization. In order to drive future progress, the Director
has assembled a strategic execution team of field and
headquarters personnel. The team will focus on accelerating the
progress on many of the changes already under way, including
the implementation of the intelligence program at FBI
headquarters and in the field, and enhancing our recruiting,
training, and career development across the FBI.
The FBI's Counterterrorism Division within the National
Security Branch was at the forefront of the FBI's strategic
planning efforts. We continue to implement a program to
translate the FBI's mission of deterring, detecting, and
disrupting national security threats and criminal activity into
action. Nearly 2 years ago the Counterterrorism Division began
using balanced scorecard. It has proven to be a helpful
management tool and, as I mentioned, has now been expanded to
use Bureau-wide. Like many private and public sector
organizations, we use this scorecard to align day-to-day
operations with broader strategies, to get feedback, and to
measure our progress as we continue to implement our
counterterrorism strategy.
In a major shift since 9/11, our counterterrorism strategy
now weighs the benefits of gathering intelligence to dismount
terrorist networks against the value of prosecuting individual
terrorists, and our revised counterintelligence strategy calls
for a higher level of performance by focusing not simply on
identifying foreign intelligence collection networks but on
reducing foreign intelligence collection opportunities, and
doing so nationwide.
In keeping with the strategic planning focus across the
organization we are currently adopting a balanced scorecard
approach to link strategy with operations across the National
Security Branch. As a result of this approach, we will further
enhance our intelligence capabilities. A key part of our
success is understanding our threat environment. To ensure that
we are collecting intelligence that responds to national
priorities, our field intelligence groups are looking beyond
cases and using intelligence to develop greater awareness of
threats in their domain.
To enhance our knowledge of our domain, the FBI is also
implementing a desk officer program. This program will provide
an integrated collaborative network that maintains the FBI's
understanding of current threats as they evolve. We are also
enhancing our confidential human source program by updating
guidelines on human source policy and human source validation.
Through these efforts we are able to direct our valuable
resources to combat the critical threats and vulnerabilities we
face.
Among the key post-9/11 changes, we have enhanced our
information sharing capabilities to ensure the intelligence we
collect is shared with our law enforcement and intelligence
partners. This is crucial to fulfilling the FBI's mission. We
have expanded our participation in State and local intelligence
fusion centers nationwide, and recognize these centers as being
fundamental in facilitating the sharing of homeland security
and criminal-related information and intelligence.
We are also enhancing our training initiatives. For
example, we refined our basic analytical training course with a
focus on critical thinking, writing and briefing. Working with
our intelligence community partners we also developed an 8-week
course that offers agents a variety of techniques for
identifying, developing, and recruiting human sources. We have
also modified new agents training to provide more than 100
additional hours of national security-related training.
In addition, we have begun the first iteration of a
specialized counterterrorism course known as the
Counterterrorism Stage Two Academy, which is mandatory training
for agents who are designated to the counterterrorism career
path. This course, which supplements the counterterrorism
curriculum provided in new agents training, focuses on laws,
policies, and competencies specific to the counterterrorism
program.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, although we recognize that we
have much work ahead as we continue to adapt to ever changing
threats, we look back on the past 6 years as a time of
remarkable accomplishment for the FBI. We have implemented
revolutionary changes post-9/11 while accelerating the tempo of
our counterterrorism operations. Today the FBI is a stronger
organization, combining greater capabilities with our
longstanding commitment to the security of the United States
while upholding the Constitution and protecting civil
liberties.
Thank you for your continued support of the FBI's national
security programs. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hulon follows:]
Prepared Statement of Willie T. Hulon, Executive Assistant Director,
National Security Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Good afternoon Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman Bond, and Members of the
Committee. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the FBI's progress
in strengthening its intelligence capabilities to protect our homeland.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the FBI's priorities
shifted as we charted a new course, with national security at the
forefront of our mission to protect America. The intervening 6 years
have seen significant changes at the FBI. Although we recognize that
there is much more work to be done, we have made remarkable progress.
The FBI has been engaged in a continuous effort to build its
intelligence program. We must continue to evolve as the threat evolves.
Today, the FBI is a stronger organization, combining greater
capabilities with the longstanding commitment to the security of the
United States, while upholding the Constitution and protecting civil
liberties.
Chief among the changes has been the enhancement of an intelligence
program, which we began implementing in early 2002. In 2003, we created
an Office of Intelligence, which was charged with creating a single
program to manage all FBI intelligence production activities. We also
expanded our analytic, reporting, and intelligence capabilities.
Since that time, the 9/11 Commission, the WMD Commission, and the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) have offered
additional recommendations and guidance on how to further strengthen
the FBI's intelligence program. In response, in February 2005 the FBI
officially established the Directorate of Intelligence as a dedicated
and integrated intelligence service within the FBI. In September 2005,
we implemented a Presidential directive based on the WMD Commission's
recommendation to establish a ``National Security Service'' that
integrates the FBI's national security programs under the leadership of
an Executive Assistant Director. The National Security Branch (NSB)
comprises the FBI's Counterterrorism Division (CTD),
Counterintelligence Division (CD), the Directorate of Intelligence
(DI), and--as of July 2006--the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
Directorate. More recently, we have been working with the PFIAB to
further our efforts to build our intelligence program. In a relatively
short period of time, the FBI has made significant progress in
implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the Weapons of
Mass Destruction Commission, and the PFIAB while continuing to meet the
numerous other expectations placed upon the Bureau.
With these structures in place, we are working to implement a
Balanced Scorecard, a management system that enables organizations to
clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into actions. We
began using this strategy management system in the Counterterrorism
Division approximately 2 years ago and it has proven to be a helpful
management tool. The Director has implemented the approach Bureau wide.
Like many others in the private and public sectors, we will use the
Balanced Scorecard to align day-to-day operations with broader
strategies, to get feedback, and to measure our progress as we move
forward in our evolution as a national security organization.
strengthening our intelligence capabilities
The NSB is currently adopting this approach to link strategy with
operations and further enhance our intelligence capabilities. The NSB's
mission is to lead and coordinate intelligence efforts that drive
actions to protect the United States. Our goals are to develop a
comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and
transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us.
Such networks include terrorist organizations, foreign intelligence
services, those that seek to proliferate weapons of mass destruction,
and criminal enterprises.
In order to be successful, we must understand the threat, continue
to integrate our intelligence and law enforcement capabilities in every
FBI operational program, and continue to expand our contribution to the
intelligence community knowledge base.
A key development in the evolution of the FBI's intelligence
program was the establishment of Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs) in
each of the FBI's 56 field offices. The FIGs manage and coordinate the
FBI's intelligence collection and reporting efforts in the field. From
an information-sharing perspective, the FIGs are the FBI's primary
component for receiving and disseminating information. They complement
the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and other squads and task
forces. The FIGs play a major role in ensuring that we share what we
know with others in the intelligence community and our Federal, state,
local, and tribal law enforcement partners.
desk officers
As part of the FBI's efforts to enhance our understanding of the
national threat picture, we are implementing a Desk Officer Program.
This program will consist of an integrated network of Special Agent and
Intelligence Analyst teams assigned to national, division, regional,
and field desks. The FBI's Desk Officers will assess and adjust
collection efforts; identify collection gaps; target collection and
source development against these gaps so they are consistent with
priority national intelligence requirements; satisfy internal
requirements; collaborate with partners; and convert and broadly
disseminate the consolidated results, leading to enhanced knowledge of
the threat environment.
The FBI's desk structure is based on country and topical
priorities, as set forth in the National Intelligence Priorities
Framework and internal priorities. The Desk Officer Program will focus
not only on the management and advancement of existing cases but also
on maintaining a networked and coordinated national collection effort.
Over time, this program will enhance our confidence that we understand
and have penetrated terrorist, criminal, cyber, and foreign
intelligence threats.
human intelligence
Another critical element of our enhanced intelligence capability is
our Confidential Human Source Program. The FBI, in collaboration with
the Department of Justice, is completing a Confidential Human Source
Re-engineering Project to enhance and improve the administration and
operation of the FBI's Human Source Program.
As part of the Re-Engineering Project, the FBI and DOJ have worked
to update guidelines on human source policy and human source
validation. The ultimate goals of the Re-engineering Project are to
streamline, consolidate, and update all human source guidelines;
develop a ``one source'' concept; and strengthen the validation of
human sources.
The release of the new Attorney General's Guidelines Regarding the
Use of FBI Confidential Human Sources signed on December 13, 2006,
marked a pivotal milestone to accomplish the one-source concept.
Complementing these guidelines are two manuals: the Confidential Human
Source Policy Manual (Policy Manual) and the Confidential Human Source
Validation Standards Manual (Validation Manual). The Policy Manual
governs source administration including compliance with the AG
Guidelines, while the Validation Manual standardizes the FBI's source
validation review process. These manuals, along with the new AG
Guidelines, took effect on June 13, 2007.
information sharing and collaboration
Among the fundamental post-9/11 changes, the FBI has enhanced its
information sharing capabilities to ensure the intelligence we collect
is disseminated to our law enforcement and intelligence community
partners. Consistent with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act (IRTPA), the FBI actively participates in the
Information Sharing Environment (ISE). We have a senior-level manager
detailed to the Office of the ISE Program Manager in the Office of the
DNI, have assigned FBI personnel to numerous ISE working groups, and
have designated the Assistant Director for the FBI Intelligence
Directorate as the FBI member of the Presidentially established
Information Sharing Council (ISC) and the White House's Information
Sharing Policy Coordination Committee.
dissemination of intelligence products
The FBI also has undertaken a number of activities focused on
enhancing our intelligence production and dissemination. These
initiatives include new policy, procedures, standards, training, and
oversight to optimize our contribution to the information needs of
policymakers, the intelligence community and our state, local, tribal,
and private sector partners. We issued policy to standardize and
streamline the processing of raw and finished intelligence reports,
gain more timely and consistent reporting, and allow for the direct
release of certain categories of reporting without FBI Headquarters'
review; established new reporting vehicles to meet niche customer
markets; and began instituting metrics to allow us to measure
performance across a range of issues relating to the dissemination of
intelligence.
Through these efforts, we have strengthened the FBI's intelligence
presence within the intelligence and law enforcement communities by
sharing Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs), Intelligence
Assessments, Intelligence Bulletins, and related intelligence
information on platforms routinely used by our law enforcement and
intelligence community partners. These platforms include the Joint
Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), Secure Internet
Router Protocol Network (SIPRNet) and Law Enforcement Online (LEO), as
well as on the FBI Intranet.
fusion centers
Information sharing with state, local, and tribal law enforcement
is crucial to fulfilling the FBI's intelligence mission. The vast
jurisdiction of state, local, and tribal officers brings invaluable
access to millions of people and resources, which can help protect the
Nation and its citizens. The FBI has expanded its efforts to share raw
intelligence reporting and analysis with state, local, and tribal
entities on LEO and RISS. The FBI also produces joint bulletins with
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for our law enforcement
partners on threat issues.
State Fusion Centers and other multi-agency intelligence centers
have become a focal point of information exchange and relationship
building linked to many key issues important to the FBI mission. The
FBI recognizes that fusion centers are fundamental in facilitating the
sharing of homeland security and criminal-related information and
intelligence and considers our participation in fusion centers an
extension of our traditionally strong working relationship with our
state, local, tribal, and private sector partners. In June 2006, we
directed all field offices to assign personnel to the leading fusion
center in each state or field division territory and to participate in
other centers as resources permit.
secure work environment
The FBI's expanded role in intelligence operations has
significantly increased the requirement to build Secure Work
Environment (SWE) facilities. The goal is to provide the physical
infrastructure and IT connectivity to enable FBI personnel to execute
their mission of protecting national security. We also are working to
provide Sensitive Compartmented Information Operational Network (SCION)
access as quickly as possible to our prioritized locations so we have a
baseline level of connectivity in the field offices and resident
agencies most involved in national security investigations.
training and development
To prepare our national security workforce to work collaboratively
against national security threats to the United States, we continue to
strengthen our training. As part of these efforts, New Agent Training
has been modified to provide more than 100 additional hours of training
in all national security-related areas. This includes approximately 45
hours in counterterrorism training, and additional instruction in
counterintelligence, counterproliferation, and weapons of mass
destruction. The additional training hours are designed to add to the
flexibility and adaptability of all Special Agents to enable them to
work the varied programs required of them.
We have undertaken a comprehensive restructuring of our approach to
intelligence training. In addition to augmenting New Agents training,
in the past 8 months we have developed and are delivering a course
targeting FBI Reports Officers (ROs) who play a central role in the
intelligence cycle. We are on an aggressive schedule that will train
every RO by the end of this calendar year. We piloted and have run
multiple iterations of a course for managers of Intelligence Analysts
that is designed to give supervisors, many of whom are Special Agents,
the skills and awareness to optimize their role in the intelligence
cycle.
Working with the DNI and the Kent School at CIA, we developed and
taught the first iteration of a 10-week Intelligence Basic Course (IBC)
that provided 24 analysts foundational skills in critical thinking,
writing, and speaking--core competencies of the analytic art. This
month, we launched the second iteration of IBC. In addition to an
intermediate version of this course, we are developing a shorter field
version that we plan to deploy in early 2008. This field version is
designed as a ``refresher course'' for analysts to maintain their
critical skills.
National training seminars reaching every field office were held to
address Field Intelligence Operations, Foreign Intelligence Collection,
and Human Source Management and Validation. Beginning last summer, the
NSB leadership began a series of small group workshops for Assistant
Directors-in-Charge (ADICs) and Special Agents-in-Charge (SACs) focused
exclusively on decisionmaking and managing field intelligence
operations. We continue our successful partnership with the Kellogg
School at Northwestern University to train senior and mid-level
managers in leading the change that comes with our intelligence
responsibilities.
In September 2006, we launched a new Human Source Targeting and
Development course, which introduces agents to a systematic approach to
identifying, developing, and recruiting human sources. The course
incorporates relevant elements from tradecraft used by other
intelligence community agencies into a framework for a curriculum that
is tailored to the FBI's unique jurisdictional authorities and mission.
conclusion
The FBI has a mandate from the President, Congress, the Attorney
General, and the DNI to protect national security by producing
intelligence in support of our investigative mission, national
intelligence priorities, and the needs of other customers.
The FBI has always used intelligence to solve cases; however,
today, we count on our agents and analysts working hand-in-hand with
colleagues around the country and around the world to collectively
piece together information about multiple, interrelated issues. With
the authority and guidance provided by the IRTPA and other directives
and recommendations, the FBI has implemented significant changes to
enhance our ability to counter today's most critical threats. We look
forward to continuing to work with the committee to strengthen our
capabilities.
Thank you for your continued support and interest in the FBI's
national security program. I would be happy to answer any questions you
may have.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, sir.
Phil Mudd, did you have a statement you wanted to make?
Mr. Mudd. No, thank you.
Chairman Rockefeller. No thank you? I was looking forward
to it.
Mr. Mudd. Yes, sir, but I wasn't.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Rockefeller. All right. One down for Rockefeller,
one up for Mudd.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Rockefeller. You heard, I believe, the last panel.
You were inside or outside?
Mr. Hulon. We were outside, sir.
Chairman Rockefeller. Why?
Mr. Hulon. That's where we were.
Mr. Mudd. We did have a TV access to the panel.
Chairman Rockefeller. Uh-huh. OK.
I've got to say, Mr. Hulon, I have every reason to respect
you and no reason not to respect you. But quite honestly, in
listening to your testimony, I had the feeling that came out of
OMB. In other words, I had the feeling that everything was on
the uprise and there may be problems and yes, there is much
work to do. What's going on in my head is yes, there's much
work to do, but most of what was going on in the last panel was
what it is that is not happening, and I really feel that I, at
least from my point of view, I need to make you deal with that.
You know, this has been repeated from before, but the
Committee learned that in 2007 only 60 percent of the
counterterrorism special supervisory agent positions were
filled. In the headquarters section that covers al-Qa'ida-
related cases, more than 23 percent of the supervisory agent
positions were vacant. Stunning to me. That's stunning to me.
On the one hand, Peace Corps, Vista, all of those things
shooting through the sky in quality and applications. On the
other hand, CIA, DIA, et cetera, shooting up in numbers of
applications and quality of applications.
I don't know where FBI stands. When you say a position is
vacant, I'm dumbfounded. This is protection of the nation. I
just I can't understand it. I can't assimilate it. It may be
because I don't understand Washington well enough. On the other
hand, I've been here a long time.
So you've attempted, you said, to address headquarters
vacancies by offering these TDYs--temporary duty assignments--
$27,000 bonuses--but they have failed. Well, look, $27,000 is
more than the total average income of the average West Virginia
family. So we got a whole lot of folks who would take that in a
shot. They might not be, you know, yes or no--some of them
qualified, some of them not.
But what is it that the FBI has conducted, looked at, to
understand why the organization has such difficulty in
recruiting special agents to headquarters? And what new
initiatives are not only under way but heading toward fruition
now some 7 years later? I'm puzzled by your testimony.
Mr. Hulon. Sir, let me respond to that please. I totally
agree with you in regards to the vacancies at FBI headquarters.
They need to be filled. When we talk about the 23-percent
vacancy rate, that is for headquarters supervisors within the
FBI in the counterterrorism division at headquarters. The
problem that we're facing is the attraction of agents to come
to the Washington, DC area. Part of that is in due to the cost
of living here, and that's why we added those incentives that
weres mentioned in my written testimony.
But what we are doing in the FBI now is looking at a long-
term solution that is going to bring about more long-term
cultural change in the FBI, because what we are contemplating
doing--and it's already in process--is that we're going to make
duty assignments at headquarters similar to assignments at our
larger field office where agents, as a part of their career
development, would rotate into nonsupervisory operation
divisions in positions at headquarters, which is where we have
some of the vacancies in the counterterrorism division.
So we do have a long-term solution. I don't want to make
excuses for our inability to fill those spots. We have tried
various short- term solutions that were not successful, so
we're going to have to take a more aggressive approach to fill
those positions and that is one of the strategy positions that
we have ongoing with Director Mueller today.
Chairman Rockefeller. OK. Vice Chairman Christopher Bond.
Vice Chairman Bond. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Reflecting on
the Department of Defense where the Chairman and the Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff come from different
military services, one might view agents and analysts in a
similar fashion.
What would be the impact if Congress required that the
number one and two positions within the National Security
Branch rotate between agents and analysts? Would that give
analysts a greater impact or do you feel they don't need it?
Mr. Hulon. I think right now we are addressing that in the
FBI and it's not a quick overnight change. As you can see now,
even with the National Security Branch, I'm an FBI special
agent with 24 years of service. The associate EAD, the number
two position in the National Security Branch, is actually held
right now by an analyst, my colleague, Philip Mudd, who has
over 20 years of service to the CIA as an analyst. So we are
actually moving toward that and----
Vice Chairman Bond. So you're there where we would----
Mr. Hulon. We're actually there now at the National
Security Branch executive level. We also have analysts in
management positions in the FBI. One of our deputy assistant
directors who's in charge of counterterrorism analysis is an
analyst. Actually we recruited him from the CIA shortly after
9/11. So we are moving in that direction, and we also have
analysts in supervisory positions in both the FBI headquarters
and also the field.
Vice Chairman Bond. Well, Mr. Mudd, I might turn to you and
see maybe you can offer a different view than the previous
panel about the lack of recognition, award, rewards for
analysts. Do you feel that you're getting the kind of analysts,
talent, and opportunities and career path that are needed to
make the special National Security Branch effective?
Mr. Mudd. I managed analysts and operators at the CIA for
years. I think if you asked analysts at the Bureau who've been
there, let's say, 3 or 4 years, they would say we progressed
over that time not only in terms of their professional
development, but also in terms of the FBI culture and
acceptance of analysis.
At the same time, I'm not here to snow you. If you asked
analysts--myself as an analyst--whether FBI analysts have the
same training opportunities and a 50-year history that, say,
CIA has in analysis, I can't tell you that's true. So we've
progressed from where we were a few years ago, but we have a
ways to go in terms of understanding the interaction between
operations and analysis and ensuring that we offer long-term
careers to the new people we're bringing in. They're very
talented.
Vice Chairman Bond. I've heard some different views
expressed on this question and we've had some concerns about
it. I would--well, first of all, can you assure me that your
testimony was not written by OMB or significantly changed by
OMB?
Mr. Hulon. Yes, sir, I can.
Vice Chairman Bond. OK. Now, number two, giving us your
best unvarnished view, what is the current relationship, and
how productive is it, between the FBI and the DNI?
Mr. Hulon. Actually, in looking at the relationship between
the FBI and the DNI, I think it's one that's still maturing.
We've had a turnover at the DNI with the leadership of the DNI.
But as far as on a day-to-day operational basis, we have a lot
of interaction but we have not been as plugged in as I think we
could be. It's a matter of the DNI and the rest of the
intelligence community having a better understanding of the
FBI, our operations and the guidelines we operate under, as
well as us having a better understanding of the DNI and where
they're going with the strategy there. But it's one----
Vice Chairman Bond. As you describe it, then, that's not
something that you need legislation to fix. Mr. Mudd has come
over from the CIA and there used to be, unfortunately, a total
gulf between the two. Is this something that you can fix and
without our getting messed up in it, and how long is it going
to take you to finish doing the job?
Mr. Hulon. You know, that's a good question, sir, and I
can't really give you a definitive answer on that. I do think
that with everyone focused on the mission, and of course the
mission is critical, we will be working to a point to where
it's actually working much better and we have better
connectivity and support of from the DNI and also supporting
the DNI's initiatives and goals and so forth to support the
mission.
I'm not sure that additional legislation will help. I think
it's just going to be a matter of us maturing the relationship
to get to where we need to get.
Vice Chairman Bond. Any final thoughts, Mr. Mudd, on that?
Mr. Mudd. Just a quick one. There is a substantial
difference, I think it's worth understanding, between CIA's
relationship with the DNI and FBI. The CIA has decades of
tradition building these kinds of intelligence programs. We
have an advantage, I think, in terms of growing a relationship
and a partnership with the DNI's office over the next decade.
As we think about how we grow analytic training or how we do
reporting of intelligence information and the DNI grows in the
same areas, we're asking questions like, are we meeting your
standards for training? Are we meeting your standards for
reporting? And, by contrast, CIA is coming at this with, say,
50 or 60 years of doing this and they might not need the same,
I think, help that we need, and we still need a lot of help.
Vice Chairman Bond. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Chairman Rockefeller. Senator Mikulski.
Senator Mikulski. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hulon, Mr. Mudd, good to see you again. I'm here now in
my hat as a authorizer, not an appropriator, but I too want to
join the Chairman for thanking you for your extensive service
and sacrifice and to all who are working at the FBI so that we
have a safer country, whether it's in the streets and
neighborhoods, or around the world.
Mr. Chairman, one of the things that I believe is that we,
Congress, does not fully understand what we have created with
the National Security Bureau, and, therefore, don't appreciate
what's been done. This is why this hearing is so good.
And I would encourage the Committee to go out to the
National Counterterrorism Center--the NCTC--and see how the FBI
is integrated there, which picks up--I know the Vice Chairman's
interested in the DNI, but we're interested in the operation.
The other is to also, when traveling, to visit our embassies.
I've been particularly impressed at the way the FBI's been
integrating--the London example is a very good answer--and then
also in the field offices. Again, pledging the support between
the appropriators and authorizers, if we maybe wanted to do a
joint visit to the NCTC it might be an interesting phenomena.
But, having said that, let me go on though to something
that's been of great interest to me which is the analyst
program and is the subject of so much focus. I'd like to refer
in my questions to the IG report on workforce hiring, training,
and retention of analysts that was issued in April 2007. And
they give you a lot of credit--you, the FBI and the NSB--for
improvements in hiring, training, and utilization of them, but
they raise some very important flashing yellow lights, and I'd
like to go over them.
Number one, it said you didn't meet your hiring goals. I
know the Ranking Member has raised it. But what was troubling
to me is that also they point out that the time to hire an
analyst has gone, from 2004 to 2006, from 19 weeks to 31 weeks.
I'd like to know why that's so, rather than, with more
experience in doing this, it's not less time.
Number two, that there is concern about the professional
divide between special agents and analysts that can be potholes
or speed bumps into collaboration. And number four, the
importance of training--that there does not seem to be a
satisfactory training program for the analyst. And last, but
not at all least, their utilization--that in some instances,
they're still feeling like they're Orphan Annies in some
offices doing--I don't mean to say clerical work, but more
administrative functions.
So one, shortening the hiring time; number two, the
integration with special agents; number three, utilizing them
in the field offices so once we get them we do that, and then
what do you want to do to hold onto them once you get them,
because they say after 5 years out of there, going to the
private sector, big bucks, less stress.
Mr. Hulon. OK. Thank you, Senator. Let me start off first.
If it's OK with you, I'll take a couple of them out of order.
Senator Mikulski. Whatever way. That's why I went through
them. This is really to hear from you on how we can help you be
you.
Mr. Hulon. OK. Actually, when you talk about the
utilization of the analysts in the field offices, we have
really focused on making sure that we have the analysts focused
on their analytical duties. As a matter of fact, just last
summer we went out with another mandate to ensure that analysts
did not receive collateral duties that would take them away
from their critical analytical work. So we sent that out to the
field.
We directed the special agents in charge to make sure that
they adhered to that. We have gotten pretty good responses back
from the field as far as that being done. However, we do keep
in mind that there will be situations where there will be a
need for crises or critical situations to divert resources and
we do understand that that could in fact happen. But we have
addressed a lot of the stories that you might hear about
analysts taking out the trash or answering the phone or doing
complaint duty or sitting in the reception area. So we have
addressed that so we are really focusing those valuable
resources on what they were hired to do.
In regards to the agent/analyst divide, we hear a lot about
that, and I think some of that is anecdotal. Some of it's
historical discussions going back to the old stories about the
agent/analyst or support divide. What we have done recently,
within the last few years, and we've accelerated that, is that
we're integrating the analytical workforce more with the agent
workforce. We have agents and analysts working together on the
FIGs--the field intelligence groups--in the field offices. We
also have analysts embedded on the squads--the operational
squads in the field offices--who are doing the same thing at
headquarters in the Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence
divisions where we have teams of analysts and agents working
together. So, of course, the job----
Senator Mikulski. Can I jump in here with this?
Mr. Hulon. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Mikulski. As people go through Quantico and then
their, I'll call it continuing ed----
Mr. Hulon. Right.
Senator Mikulski. For the agents, do you provide training
to all special agents on the role and capabilities of analysts
so that they get it when they're starting and they're reminded
of it as they get their courses to upgrade their skills?
Mr. Hulon. Yes, ma'am. That has not been something that has
been historically done. That's something that we're integrating
into our new training strategy.
Senator Mikulski. So you do that now?
Mr. Hulon. We're starting to do that now with----
Senator Mikulski. When did you start?
Mr. Hulon. Actually, last summer we enhanced our new agents
training program to add 100 hours of national security
training. In that we enhanced our intelligence training that
actually talks about some of the assets that the analysts bring
to the table.
We also have recently implemented a new training program
for supervisors of analysts to make sure that there are
supervisors because we have some situations where special
agents are supervising analysts and have the analysts working
with them. So we actually have a training course to make sure
that the agents start to understand and appreciate what the
analysts are doing. So that is something that we're integrating
into the numerous projects and priorities that we have.
Senator Mikulski. Can you talk about why it took so long to
do that? That's number one. And number two, hiring goals is
one, but to move them through the process? If it takes 30 weeks
to hire an analyst, this is a new generation. They could be
moving, going to the private sector, to academia. You know,
you're in a war for talent. You want to talk about why it takes
30 weeks, and do you intend to shorten that? Why does it take
30 weeks?
Mr. Hulon. I'm not sure where the IG--what they used when
they came up with their numbers. Some of it could have been the
environment when they were doing their review. We've had some
situations where we've had to slow down our hiring because of
budget constraints, so we've gone through, experienced some of
that. So I'm not sure if that's actually factored into their
assessment.
And actually, I can ask Wayne Murphy, the Assistant
Director for the Directorate of Intelligence, if he might be
able to shed a little light on that, because I know he's been
focusing on that.
Senator Mikulski. Does it take 30 weeks to hire an analyst?
Mr. Mudd. If I could make one quick point on that, and that
is, in the intelligence community, when you're hiring people at
the top secret level or the highest security clearance you can
get, I'm not sure about the 31-week number. My experience at
CIA is that it takes substantially longer than that because of
the process, which is labor- intensive, of getting a security
clearance. So it's not the hiring process; it's the security
process.
One more point on this. You talk about a war for talent
with the private sector, which is true. We have the beauty of
offering, frankly, a better mission than the private sector
offers, which is why we get such good applicants. But when you
look at an application process for an analyst, if you start in
the fall of the senior year of a student, you have time to work
through that year. In other words, you're not asking that
student, oftentimes, to forgo another job opportunity. That
person is going through his academic year as you do the
security clearance process.
Senator Mikulski. Mr. Chairman, I note that my time has
expired. I'd like to just comment on one item that Mr. Hulon
said when I pressed him on the 30 weeks and he said budget
constraints.
Do you remember when we did the CR going from 2006 to 2007,
right after the election? I'll tell you what happened. They did
a CR and they left out the FBI. And we had to fight on that.
And this had--because it was both the special agents--it was a
variety of personnel.
But it goes to what my point is, which is the Congress
itself does not embrace the idea that we've created a national
security branch and that when we press for the passage of a
budget that says, no matter what, we're going to fund defense
approps, we're going to fund homeland security approps, the FBI
has been left out of that.
Now, fortunately, in discussions with Senator Reed, they
got it, which is why our appropriations were able to move so
expeditiously this year. But they've been left out of the
picture, and as a result have had to keep the pace while the
hiring and uncertainty was in the air. So they've got a case to
make about us while we're quizzing them.
Mr. Hulon. I'm sorry. Senator, we do really appreciate your
support in that regard, because that is part of some of what we
have to deal with. And, as we talked about and as it was in my
opening comments, at the same time that we're taking on a lot
of this transformation, this revolutionary change in the FBI to
shift from being focused on law enforcement to be more focused
on intelligence and national security, we're doing that, and
we're keeping that ops tempo up at the same time that we're
doing the transformation with the limited number of resources
that we have available.
Senator Mikulski. I'm done for now.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Senator Mikulski.
Senator Whitehouse.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, you indicated that you were not here when
Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton were testifying. Did you
listen to and watch what they were saying?
Mr. Hulon. We heard some of it. I heard some of it on the
television.
Senator Whitehouse. OK. It kind of amazes me that when the
Chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, who've worked so hard on this
issue, are here testifying about your agency before Congress,
you missed any of that. But I guess that's neither here nor
there.
Mr. Hulon. Sir, we were here, but we were told to wait in a
certain area.
Senator Whitehouse. OK.
Well, I went back to the 2005 report where they gave
grades, and although they indicated they weren't all that
comfortable with grades, the C that the FBI earned in
developing the national security personnel piece, they said
they wouldn't improve on it; and indeed, Congressman Hamilton
said that with respect to WMD issues, not even a C.
And, you know, I'm new to this. I'm looking at a report
that says if they don't get it right, we should take this away
from them. I'm looking at what is one of the top issues our
country faces. I think everybody agrees with that. I'm looking
at an issue that has, you know, enormous--I said earlier, it
kind of transfixes the President and the Vice President. So
there's clear White House emphasis on this issue, and yet we
keep hearing about the analyst track issue. There's senior
turnover. There's this, that and the other.
What is it? I mean, help me put my finger on what is wrong
that prevents this from being an A program when, to the best I
can tell, every bureaucratic force that can be brought to bear
is ineffectual in getting you to that point? What am I missing?
What is the holdup? What is the problem? Where are we stuck?
Mr. Hulon. Let me try to respond to that. Actually, you
know, I couldn't agree with you more that we would like to move
faster. And when you go back and you start looking at the
timetable from 2001 up until now, you're talking about a pretty
large chunk of time.
We did make some progress during that time period. And, of
course, right after 9/11 we were responding to a tremendous
amount of threats, so we had a pretty high-paced ops tempo. At
the same time, we were moving forward, making some of the
transition.
I think within the last year and a half we have made
substantial progress with a lot of the initiatives that we put
in place, a lot of priorities that we have that people have
talked about, about the numerous priorities that we have with
the training, the recruitment and bringing the intelligence
capabilities up to a certain level.
I think, at the same time, though, in order to make the
dramatic change that we're expected to make and that we are
making, it's just something that takes a lot of time to do. It
was interesting; just yesterday we were talking to the Deputy
Director from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and
we were talking about the transition, because we're actually
talking to others and looking to see how we can accelerate our
pace. And he talked about the establishment of CSIS in 1984 and
how it's a long-term project to get to where you need to get.
And they, of course, were split off from the RCMP.
And he talked about the transformation and the time and the
change that it takes to get it done. And I think that's what
we're experiencing now in what we are doing and what we have
done. As I mentioned in my statement for the record, we have
taken it to another level and we've brought contractors on to
help us prioritize and move forward with the transformation.
And I think that's where we're going to go, and we're
actually accelerating that. And when you're talking about the
grade average, you know, C or B or whatever, I think you have
to also look at the operations that we're carrying out each
day. We have men and women of the FBI, to include agents and
analysts, that are working from sun up to sundown to make sure
that we're safeguarding this country. And we're doing that in
coordination with our partners in the intelligence community as
well as the law enforcement community.
And I think if you look at what we're doing in the field
with the JTTFs, the joint terrorism task forces, and even some
of the comments and feedback that you get from our partners in
the law enforcement community, you will see that we are making
that change, that transformation. And you talk about
intelligence-sharing. We're making great strides there, but
we're not where we need to be yet.
Senator Whitehouse. Let me ask you real quick about those
JTTFs. I was the U.S. attorney in Rhode Island. I worked with
the Bureau on a lot of issues. We were, at that point, probably
one of the most aggressive groups in the country on terrorism
protection and so forth. The first operation the FBI ever did
in terms of having a sort of field drill with all the locals
involved and all that kind of stuff was a bomb going off on a
ferry in Providence Harbor. So I'm pretty sensitive to a lot of
this stuff.
You know, there are 93 U.S. attorney's offices out there,
and a lot of work goes into these JTTFs times 93. And you look;
some of them are pretty rural, pretty remote. I don't know that
Providence is the real epicenter of terrorist threat. You know,
it's hard to know where to locate it, but I'm just wondering,
is it really your evaluation that having all that emphasis on
JTTFs in every single district is a worthwhile deployment of
your resources?
Mr. Hulon. It's a very worthwhile deployment of our
resources. Number one, I'm not sure that we have one in every
district. In some divisions, like in some of the major cities,
we have actually more than one JTTF or module of the JTTF. But
what you have to look at when you look at the terrorist threat
is that it's not always in the centers, the metropolitan
centers. The threat, and also the activity, could be in some
outlying territory.
So to actually have the JTTFs the way we have them, we have
over 100 now. And what we've done is actually brought together
the law enforcement agencies throughout the country to focus on
the terrorism mission.
And when we have investigations and leads and things that
we're following up on with the JTTFs, they're not just in the
metropolitan areas. It goes across the country.
So I think our deployment of JTTFs is very appropriate. And
from my perspective, I would like to have even more. We get
requests continually from our partners in the law enforcement
community that they would like to have more involvement, would
like to have more JTTFs in other areas. So I think the
deployment of the JTTFs now is appropriate.
Senator Whitehouse. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to have a second
round if I may, if that's convenient, after everybody else is
done.
Chairman Rockefeller. Senator Wyden, would you yield?
Please proceed.
Senator Whitehouse. Well, I wanted to change to another
topic, which is the Los Angeles Times story from Sunday, which
indicated that the FBI is quietly reconstructing the cases
against Khalid Shaykh Mohammed and 14 other accused al-Qa'ida
leaders, spurred in part by concerns that years of CIA
interrogation have yielded evidence that is inadmissible or too
controversial to present at their upcoming war crimes
tribunals.
Do you know if that is true or not?
Mr. Hulon. I would probably feel more comfortable talking
to you about that in another setting.
Senator Whitehouse. The article says that the FBI
investigations involve as many as 300 agents and analysts. From
the point of view of deployment, do you know if that is true?
Mr. Hulon. I wouldn't want to get into those discussions in
this session, sir. I would be more than happy to talk to you in
another setting in regards to that, though, sir.
Senator Whitehouse. It says that according to former Bureau
officials, the Director pulled many of the agents back from
playing even a supporting role in the interrogations to avoid
exposing them to legal jeopardy, in the belief that White House
and Justice Department opinions authorizing coercive techniques
might be overturned.
Is that something we should comment on in a different----
Mr. Hulon. Yes, sir. We shouldn't talk about any of that in
this setting.
Senator Whitehouse. Last, it said, ``Those guys were using
techniques that we didn't even want to be in the room for,''
ascribing that to one senior Federal law enforcement official.
``The CIA determined that they were going to torture people,
and we made the decision not to be involved.''
Same answer?
Mr. Hulon. Yes, sir. We'd be more than happy to talk to you
in a different setting in regards to any of that.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to put the article into the record, if I may have
unanimous consent to do that.
Chairman Rockefeller. Absolutely.
[The Los Angeles Times news article referred to follows:]
[From the Los Angeles Times, Oct. 21, 2007]
FBI WORKING TO BOLSTER AL QAEDA CASES
The U.S. is concerned that evidence obtained from CIA interrogations
will be inadmissible at war-crimes tribunals.
(By Josh Meyer)
WASHINGTON--The FBI is quietly reconstructing the cases against
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 14 other accused Al Qaeda leaders being held
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, spurred in part by U.S. concerns that years of
CIA interrogation have yielded evidence that is inadmissible or too
controversial to present at their upcoming war crimes tribunals,
government officials familiar with the probes said.
The process is an embarrassment for the Bush administration, which
for years held the men incommunicado overseas and allowed the CIA to
use coercive means to extract information from them that would not be
admissible in a U.S. court of law--and might not be allowed in their
military commissions, some former officials and legal experts said.
Even if the information from the CIA interrogations is allowed, they
said, it would probably risk focusing the trials on the actions of the
agency and not the accused.
The FBI investigations, involving as many as 300 agents and
analysts in a ``Guantanamo task force,'' have been underway for as long
as 2 years. They were requested by the Defense Department shortly after
legal rulings indicated that Mohammed--the self-proclaimed mastermind
of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks--and the other Al Qaeda suspects
probably would win some form of trial in which evidence would have to
be presented, according to senior Federal law enforcement officials.
The task force has reviewed intelligence, interviewed the 15
accused Al Qaeda leaders and traveled to several nations to talk to
witnesses and gather evidence for use in the tribunals, the Federal law
enforcement officials said. Like most others interviewed for this
article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the
sensitivity of the investigations, which are being coordinated with the
Pentagon.
A Pakistan-based U.S. official who has participated in the hunt for
Al Qaeda leaders since 2001 said he was interviewed by FBI agents 4
months ago in Washington. They were ``very aggressively pursuing KSM
and all of the things he's been involved in,'' he said, referring to
the accused terrorist by his initials.
The FBI is especially interested in Mohammed, who during the more
than 3 years he spent in CIA custody boasted that he had killed Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and orchestrated more than two
dozen other terrorist plots. Several senior counter-terrorism officials
said they believed that Mohammed falsely confessed to some things,
including the Pearl slaying, under duress or to obscure the roles
played by operatives who might still be on the loose.
Mohammed's prosecution is expected to be the centerpiece of the
military commissions, which could occur as early as next year. However,
some U.S. officials familiar with them said the tribunals could be
delayed for years by legal challenges.
The FBI's efforts appear in part to be a hedge in case the
commissions are ruled unconstitutional or never occur, or the U.S.
military detention center at Guantanamo Bay is closed. Under those
scenarios, authorities would have to free the detainees, transfer them
to military custody elsewhere, send them to another country or have
enough evidence gathered by law enforcement officials to charge them
with terrorism in U.S. Federal courts, some current and former counter-
terrorism officials and legal experts said.
``I think there's no surprise that they have to call in the FBI to
clean up the mess left by the CIA secret detention program,'' said
Jumana Musa, advocacy director for Amnesty International. ``They would
be smart to use evidence that did not come out of years of secret
detentions, interrogations and torture.''
Special Agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman, said the
investigations were a natural outgrowth of a long-standing interagency
effort. ``The FBI will support the prosecution of KSM and other high-
value detainees by making its investigative and evidentiary expertise
available to the prosecution team,'' he said. He referred all other
questions to the Defense Department.
Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the
Defense Department was working closely with its interagency
counterparts in ``building a case against KSM and scores of other men
at Guantanamo alleged to have committed law of war violations--
including the attacks of 9/11, USS Cole bombing [in 2000] and East
Africa embassy bombings [in 1998].''
Neither those two men nor CIA spokesman George E. Little would
comment on whether the FBI investigations were being conducted to
bolster shortcomings in the cases against Mohammed and the others that
are, at least in part, the result of CIA interrogations.
FBI officials interviewed for this article emphasized that the
bureau's probes should not be viewed as a repudiation of the CIA's
efforts, noting that the spy agency's primary responsibility has been
to gather intelligence to prevent further attacks, not collect evidence
for trial.
But some former and current U.S. officials said concerns about the
potential inadmissibility of the CIA interrogations, and the
controversy surrounding them, were the primary reasons the FBI agents
were sent to gather more evidence, in some cases reinterviewing
suspects and witnesses.
The FBI and CIA have appeared to be headed for a collision on the
issue of detainee interrogations since shortly after the September 2001
attacks.
From the outset, the FBI has played a central role in the hunt for
Al Qaeda leaders, helping the CIA, the military and foreign governments
track them and process evidence against them. FBI agents initially
helped interview some of the suspects, with an eye toward gathering
evidence for a criminal trial.
After Mohammed's March 2003 capture in Pakistan, some FBI agents
and Federal prosecutors made clear they wanted him tried before a jury.
The Al Qaeda leader had been indicted by a Federal grand jury in New
York in 1996 for his role in an alleged Philippines-based plot to blow
up U.S. airliners in mid-flight over the Pacific Ocean.
But the CIA moved aggressively to take over the interrogations of
Mohammed and other senior Al Qaeda detainees, beginning with suspected
training camp coordinator Abu Zubeida, who was captured in Pakistan in
2002. Some current and former FBI officials said the spy agency began
using coercive techniques such as waterboarding, or simulated drowning,
in an effort to get the detainees to talk immediately about the
terrorist network's plans.
CIA officials told The Times that the FBI wasn't getting crucial
information about pending attacks out of Zubeida that they knew he
possessed, and that their ``enhanced'' techniques ultimately worked
better and faster. Current and former FBI officials said those CIA
techniques resulted in false confessions that were obtained illegally.
By mid-2002, several former agents and senior bureau officials
said, they had begun complaining that the CIA-run interrogation program
amounted to torture and was going to create significant problems down
the road--particularly if the Bush administration was ever forced to
allow the Al Qaeda suspects to face their accusers in court.
Some went to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, according to the
former bureau officials. They said Mueller pulled many of the agents
back from playing even a supporting role in the interrogations to avoid
exposing them to legal jeopardy, in the belief that White House and
Justice Department opinions authorizing the coercive techniques might
be overturned.
``Those guys were using techniques that we didn't even want to be
in the room for,'' one senior Federal law enforcement official said.
``The CIA determined they were going to torture people, and we made the
decision not to be involved.''
A senior FBI official who since has retired said he also complained
about the lack of usable evidence and admissible statements being
gathered. ``We knew there were going to be problems back then. But
nobody was listening,'' he said. ``Now they have to live with the
policy that they have adopted. I don't know if anyone thought of the
consequences.''
Another retired FBI agent who helped lead the bureau's Al Qaeda
investigations said one fundamental flaw in the tribunal process was
that the accused terrorists might be granted the right to confront
their accusers in court--even a military one. And the CIA is likely to
prohibit its officers from taking the stand to face cross-examination
about their interrogation techniques and other highly classified
aspects of the spy agency's detainee program.
``They have put themselves in a very bad situation here,'' the
former agent said. ``They have to redo everything because they have to
come up with clean statements from these [detainees], if they can get
them, obtained by law enforcement people who can actually testify. The
CIA agents are not going to testify, nor should they.''
Pentagon spokesman Gordon and CIA spokesman Little said no decision
had been made on how much information gathered by the CIA, including
the interrogations, would be allowed into evidence at the commissions.
They also said it was too early to tell whether the CIA agents would
testify, although the courtrooms for the military commissions, Gordon
said, would be designed with partitions to protect the witnesses'
identities and with mute buttons to allow for classified testimony.
``When it comes to the high-value detainees,'' Little said, ``it
was, most of all, the efforts of the CIA--following a lawful, effective
and safe process--that led these terrorists to share concrete,
actionable intelligence that our government used to identify other
terrorist figures and disrupt their activities.''
Some former FBI officials and legal analysts said that even if
evidence gathered through the CIA interrogations were admissible, it
had lost significant credibility because of the allegations of coercion
and torture.
CIA officials have said that they never tortured the detainees and
that they operated within the law.
Ultimately, some of the terrorism suspects confessed. But the
coercive techniques made even some CIA officials skeptical of whether
their confessions were believable, much less sustainable in any court,
one former CIA counter-terrorism covert officer said.
The decision to minimize the FBI's role in interrogating the
suspects ``was regarded by many as really being in error, in part
because [CIA officers] don't have the expertise as to what is
evidentiary and what isn't,'' the official said. ``And now there are
all of these consequences.''
Musa of Amnesty International said: ``People like KSM should be
held accountable. And the real tragedy would be that the focus of the
commissions won't be on scrutinizing the conduct of Mohammed and the
others, but on the conduct of the CIA.''
Federal law enforcement officials believe they have gathered enough
admissible evidence to try the high-value detainees. ``We've redone
everything, and everything is fine,'' one official said. ``So what's
the harm?''
Chairman Rockefeller. And before I call on Senator Wyden, I
want to make it very clear that I know where you two gentlemen
were during the previous panel. And I want the record to be
very clear on the fact that we invited you to be here in this
room during that panel and that it's reasonably inconceivable
to me that you wouldn't have wanted to have been here.
Mr. Hulon. That is----
Chairman Rockefeller. 'Tis a mystery.
Mr. Hulon. Sir, if that is----
Chairman Rockefeller. You don't need to answer. I just
wanted that for the record.
Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to go into this interrogation issue as well. And
I am talking solely about the FBI, and I think this is the
matter that we also told your contact folks about.
And let me start it this way. When the public listens to
the debate about the Government conducting interrogations, the
first thing they want to know is that they're being protected
from those being interrogated who might be ticking time bombs,
people who might have knowledge, for example, about an imminent
terrorist attack.
Now, FBI techniques do not allow for torture in
interrogation. My question to you is--this is for you, Mr.
Hulon--do you have confidence that those FBI techniques are
adequate to deal with these ticking-time-bomb scenarios?
Mr. Hulon. I would have to respond to that, sir, by saying
the FBI has techniques that we use, which do not include
torture or any type of physical abuse. And we have used those
techniques and we continue to use those techniques, and we've
been successful with those techniques. But I can't say that in
every situation----
Senator Wyden. I understand that. But the question is, are
those techniques adequate to deal with the ticking-time-bomb
scenarios that are first and foremost on the mind of the
American people?
Mr. Hulon. Those, sir, are the techniques that we have to
use, and those are the ones that we do use. I can't sit here
and tell you which techniques would actually work with an
individual. It would depend on the situation.
Senator Wyden. Do you have confidence that the tools are
adequate?
Mr. Hulon. I have confidence that we are using the
authorities and the processes and tools that we have, to the
best of our abilities. And I can't comment about the use of
torture or anything else because we don't do that.
Senator Wyden. I think you're still not answering the
question. I want to ask it one more time. I know what was said
in closed session. I obviously can't get into it. I still would
like you to tell me, yes or no, whether you think the tools
that you have do not allow for torture adequate to deal with
these matters, imminent terrorist attacks, the threats that
people are most concerned about. Do you think those tools are
adequate?
Mr. Hulon. I can't give you an answer as to the use of
torture or whether or not----
Senator Wyden. That's not the question. Are the tools
adequate, sir?
Mr. Hulon. The tools that we have as far as our interview
techniques?
Senator Wyden. Yes, the tools you have.
Mr. Hulon. Those are the only ones that I know.
Senator Wyden. I won't try to ask it again.
Let me move on, then, to a question about technology. I
think it's been well-discussed that there are technology
problems at the agency. And I think the first thing I'd like to
know is whether agents and analysts at their desks now have
access to the Internet. I've read various things that there
isn't universal access. I think it'd be good to have that on
the record. Is there universal access for agents and analysts
to the Net at their desk?
Mr. Hulon. All agents and analysts do not have access at
their desktop.
Senator Wyden. Is it 80 percent, 90 percent? Can you give
me a sense of what it is?
Mr. Hulon. I'd hate to be quoted at that, but it's not at
the 80 or 90 percent rate.
Senator Wyden. It's less than 80 percent.
Mr. Hulon. Yes, sir.
Senator Wyden. When would you expect that there would be
universal access for agents and analysts to the Net at their
desks?
Mr. Hulon. Actually, right now I think we have about a
little over a third of the FBI personnel with access at their--
at least machines per employee.
It should be about another third deployed within the next
year, but I can't tell you when every agent and analyst would
have Internet access at their desktops. But they do have access
to the Internet. We have stations within field offices that
people can go to to work at, but we don't have access at
everyone's desk.
Senator Wyden. So as of today, though, about a third of the
agents and analysts have access to the Net at their desks.
Mr. Hulon. I wouldn't say it would be--I can't say that it
would be a third of agents and analysts, because it could be
other employees that would have it at their desktop, depending
on what they do. But we have about--as far as a ratio, it's
about a third as far as machines that we have available in
relation to personnel on board.
Senator Wyden. Let me see if I can get one other question
in, gentlemen.
I thank you for the indulgence, Mr. Chairman.
In 2004, gentlemen, the Congress gave the FBI the authority
to hire 24 senior intelligence analysts. But as of last month,
apparently only a handful have been hired. I've even heard
reports it's been two. Could you tell us for the record why the
agency hasn't used those authorities?
Mr. Hulon. We actually have posted for some of those
authorities, and we brought some on. We actually have three
posted now that we are recruiting for. Some of the delays had
been actually the priorities of the ones that we want to bring
on board as far as for a specific duty. Some of it we got a
little bit delayed with some budget constraints. But we are
moving forward to get those positions filled.
Senator Wyden. Is it two, though, that have actually been
hired? Is that correct? Of the authority the Congress gave, of
the 24, is it correct that 2 have been hired?
Mr. Hulon. We have hired two, yes, sir.
Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you very much, Senator Wyden.
Can I just close this hearing, which I think has been a
very, very good hearing, without having sort of the apparent
characteristics of being a good hearing, because I think
there's enormous frustration on this panel, on the Senate
Intelligence Committee, about what may or may not be happening
in the FBI.
That has been true, incidentally, for several years. That
is in no way a reflection on either of you. I'm actually quite
mad at you, Phil Mudd, for not talking more, because you were
one of our best witnesses always when you were with the CIA. I
don't know what's happened to you.
Mr. Mudd. To my left, he's 6'2'' and a lot bigger than I
am, sir.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Rockefeller. But you can dribble right around him.
And I think it opens up an important dialog. Oversight is
not meant to be comfortable. We are meant to be civil and
decent to you as good human beings, which you are, in service
of your country. But one of the things I, at least, have
learned over the last number of years is that if you're not
ready to fire the tough ones and drill down deep, you just
don't get anywhere.
I'll just give a small example. Kit Bond asked had your
testimony been cleared by OMB, or written or cleared, whichever
it was. When you said no, that is very much the exception in
all agencies of Government--in all agencies of Government. And
you may be less of a budgetary matter. But understand--and you
can feel--and I wish you had been at the first meeting--the
very deep frustration, but it's a constructive frustration.
We opened up a new field here this afternoon, at least to
this person. I doubt Senator Whitehouse--I think he knows
probably an enormous amount about all of this, but I have yet
to learn. And yet I look at the FBI in this bifurcated manner
of arresting the bad guys and then being given this new charge,
but with an enormous amount of money to carry out the charge,
which is to protect this country from terrorists, from another
attack. I don't know anything that's more immediate and
intimate to my people in West Virginia or Rhode Island, or
anywhere else than that.
And so there's a certain discomfort level. Let that be the
case. Do not be put off by it. Be invigorated by it. Know that
you're not working alone, but that you're working with a group
of people who cares very much about what you're doing but want
you to get it done, and that the ordinary flow of Government is
not satisfactory to us and cannot be, or else we're not doing
our job; hence, I think the responsibility on our part to do
better oversight, more creative oversight, and create many more
opportunities for us to interact, and thus have sort of an
intuitive understanding about where you're going, and on your
part where we're going, what we want, and what you need to tell
us.
So that wasn't exactly Shakespearean, but I hope I got my
point across. And as I say, I do consider it a very
constructive panel, even though it was not entirely a pleasant
one. Let that not disturb you.
Thank you both.
Mr. Hulon. Mr. Chairman, if I might say something----
Chairman Rockefeller. Of course.
Mr. Hulon. We appreciate the opportunity to be here to
speak with you this afternoon, and I look forward to continued
dialog because I think we have the same goal in mind, and
that's to make sure we safeguard this country. And we do
appreciate your support.
Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you.
Mr. Mudd. And if I could add to that, it took me maybe 6 to
12 months to understand the difference between intelligence
overseas and security of the United States, and I've been at
this for 22 years.
The most, I thought, telling comment today, and we glossed
over that, was Senator Mikulski saying, ``People don't
understand what we've asked you to do.'' And I think this is
correct. We're not about being the CIA or DIA. We're not about
collecting intelligence. We're about looking at a problem and
using our combined intelligence/law enforcement skills to do
something about that problem in a way that provides security
for Los Angeles or Chicago or Tuscaloosa.
This is a profound difference, in my judgment, between the
other intelligence challenges I've seen over time. And I can't
agree more with Senator Mikulski. This is a lot different than
what I grew up with. This is bigger, harder, and it has, in
some ways, greater implications for the security of this
country.
The only other thing I'd say, Senators, I think you should
push us. And in some ways you're too polite. Willie and I are
responsible for this. This is on our watch. If we don't get it
right, it's our bad. So you should call us down here. You
should ask questions. You should ask questions in front of the
camera.
We never came here for a job. We never came here for a
profession. We came here for a mission. And we will prevail.
Chairman Rockefeller. My mind goes back to the Moussaoui
incident, where the question was that his passport, I believe,
or driver's license had run out, and the decision was made to
arrest him. The decision was not made to surveil him. And I
think that encapsulates our worries.
Mr. Mudd. Senator, sorry--I don't agree, but I'll turn it
over.
Mr. Hulon. I was going to say, if that was your belief or
that was what people are thinking when we talk about what the
FBI is doing now, when we talk about the transformation of the
FBI, when we talk about the new CT strategy, as I alluded to in
my statement for the record, we've fundamentally changed the
way we do business.
Chairman Rockefeller. And that was a long time ago, and
you're quite right about that.
Mr. Hulon. Yes, sir.
Chairman Rockefeller. All right, let's end on that. The
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:04 p.m., the Committee adjourned.]