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[Senate Hearing 109-270]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 109-270
NOMINATION OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL
MICHAEL V. HAYDEN, USAF, TO BE PRINCIPAL
DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 14, 2005
__________
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence
______
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
[Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.]
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas, Chairman
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia, Chairman
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah CARL LEVIN, Michigan
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri RON WYDEN, Oregon
TRENT LOTT, Mississippi EVAN BAYH, Indiana
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
BILL FRIST, Tennessee, Ex Officio
HARRY REID, Nevada, Ex Officio
----------
Bill Duhnke, Staff Director
Andrew W. Johnson, Minority Staff Director
Kathleen P. McGhee, Chief Clerk
CONTENTS
----------
Hearing held in Washington, DC:
April 14, 2005............................................... 1
Statements of:
Mikulski, Hon. Barbara A., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Maryland................................................... 6
Murtha, Hon. John P., a U.S. Representative from the State of
Pennsylvania............................................... 8
Hayden, Lieutenant General Michael V......................... 9
Supplemental Materials:
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Questionnaire for
Completion by Presidential Nominees........................ 33
Additional questions......................................... 65
Glynn, Marilyn L., General Counsel Office of Government
Ethics, Letter to Hon. Pat Roberts......................... 72
NOMINATION OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL
MICHAEL V. HAYDEN, USAF, TO BE
PRINCIPAL DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 2005
U.S. Senate,
Senate Select Committe on Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:33 a.m., in
room SH-216, of the Hart Senate Office Building, the Honorable
Pat Roberts, Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence,
presiding.
Committee Members present: Senators Roberts, Hatch, DeWine,
Snowe, Chambliss, Rockefeller, Levin, Feinstein, Wyden and
Mikulski.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PAT ROBERTS, CHAIRMAN
Chairman Roberts. The Committee will come to order. The
Committee meets today to receive testimony on the President's
nomination for the newly created position of Principal Deputy
Director of National Intelligence. Our distinguished witness
today is the President's nominee, Lieutenant General Michael
Hayden.
General, on behalf of the entire Committee, we welcome you
and your guests. We thank you for your service to our country.
I might just say from a personal standpoint that I have
never experienced a person who has more ability than you in
regards to your responsibilities. I don't know who's in first
place in regards to being a straight, let-the-chips-fall-where-
they-may briefer to the Congress, but they're not ahead of you.
Let me say that the Committee also welcomes two of our
distinguished colleagues who will introduce the nominee, the
distinguished Senator from Maryland, a Member of our
Committee--valued Member of our Committee--and the Ranking
Member of the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary
Appropriations Subcommittee, the Honorable Barbara Mikulski.
The distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, the Honorable
Rick Santorum, had every intention to be here this morning, but
had a conflict. But Pennsylvania will be ably represented by
the Ranking Member of the House Defense Appropriations
Subcommittee, a defender and champion of the military and our
national security for many years, the Honorable Jack Murtha.
So we thank you all for being here today.
The President has made an excellent choice, I believe, in
nominating General Hayden to serve as the Nation's first
Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence. General
Hayden is a distinguished public servant, having dedicated over
35 years of service to our country.
Since March 1999, General Hayden has served as the Director
of the National Security Agency. Prior to that, he held a
number of intelligence positions within the Department of
Defense, served on the National Security Council, and was the
air attache in the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He has worked on
intelligence and national security issues throughout his
career, and in that respect brings a great deal of experience
to this position.
Most importantly, just like Ambassador Negroponte, General
Hayden has demonstrated a record as an outstanding manager and
a leader. He is well-suited for this position and I look
forward to his confirmation.
Now, much of what I spoke about in my opening statement for
Ambassador Negroponte's confirmation hearing on Tuesday also
applies in our consideration of General Hayden's nomination. I
know it probably doesn't need to be repeated at length, and I
beg the indulgence of my distinguished Vice Chairman, but if
you would indulge me just for a moment.
I spoke about how critical intelligence is for our national
security and the historical importance of the creation of a
Director of National Intelligence, even if he hasn't been
granted all of the explicit authorities that I would have liked
to have seen.
I also spoke about the importance of change, not only to
enhance our national security but also to give our hardworking
intelligence officers an intelligence community worthy of their
efforts, an intelligence community capable of meeting both
their aspirations and our expectations. I emphasized the
importance of adopting a process of sustained, fundamental
change that will allow the intelligence community to
continually adapt to new threats as they emerge.
I spoke about the important precedents that Ambassador
Negroponte and General Hayden will be setting in terms of the
authorities they exercise as the first DNI and the Principal
Deputy. These precedents will define the authority for all
future DNIs and set the tone for your leadership of the entire
intelligence community.
The one issue that I discussed on Tuesday with Ambassador
Negroponte that I would like to re-emphasize today is the
pressing need to reject the concept of information sharing. In
this particular case, both Senator Rockefeller and I are in
favor of something that we call information access. General, if
you are confirmed--and you will be--I believe that moving from
information sharing to information access will probably be your
most important job.
As I have said many times before, I believe, as does the
WMD Commission, that information sharing is a limited idea that
falsely implies that the data collector is also the data owner.
The concept of information sharing relies on the collector to
determine what an analyst needs to know and then to push that
information to the analyst.
The Vice Chairman and I think that we need new thinking on
this issue, and he has spoken to it, as I have. We need to
reverse the process, while we must continue to protect sources
and methods, without any question. Cleared analysts with the
need to know should be able to pull information by searching
all intelligence data bases without waiting for any one agency
to deem them worthy. That's a pretty challenging proposition.
Despite the intelligence failures of 9/11 and the
assessment of Iraq's WMD program, along with the staggering and
sometimes willful inability to share information associated
with those failures, achieving a free flow of intelligence
information has proven rather elusive.
Now, General Hayden, it's my hope that you will be able to
provide the leadership to get our collection agencies to
finally perfect the concept of information access. I am
encouraged by your written responses to the Committee's
questions in regard to this topic. I would note, however, for
the last several years, that you have been managing the
National Security Agency--and the NSA will be key when it comes
to achieving information access.
That's not to say that you have not made some strides--good
strides. But agencies like the NSA must lead and move faster in
getting properly cleared analysts from outside agencies the
direct access that they need.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will be working
with you, seeking your advice and counsel, and Ambassador
Negroponte, and we hope and expect to see clear signs of
progress toward information access sooner rather than later.
Now, the volume of the data in question is an issue that we
must watch carefully, but I believe that current technology can
provide the tools to manage that volume.
In regards to privacy issues, I think that properly trained
intelligence professionals outside the NSA are no less capable
of protecting civil liberties than the professionals inside the
NSA. I also understand that specialized analysis by experienced
officers, whether it be SIGINT or HUMINT or otherwise, adds
substantial value to the analytic process. Access by other
intelligence analysts will not replace that very important
work.
there's no reason that other analysts cannot have access to
the data they need to keep us safe. If those analysts find data
and have a question, they should call a specialist. But if they
don't even know the information exists, obviously they can't
make that call.
Another important challenge to information access that you
mentioned in your written response is the need to protect
sources and methods. I agree. This is a very serious matter.
But I hasten to add that the lessons of 9/11 and the Iraq WMD
failures is that protecting sources and methods must be
balanced against the need to provide information access to
those who actually need it.
So today, those competing concerns are not really properly
balanced. And you, sir, must fix that. I have every confidence
that you can and will. Simply put, we must see progress toward
information access. So we hope to see you up here telling this
Committee what help you need from Congress to get the job done.
We're most willing to help you achieve that.
Despite the ambiguities in the DNI authorities, I am
confident, when confirmed, you and the Ambassador will have the
strong support of the President. You, sir, should be confident
that you will have the same strong support from this Committee.
As we discussed with Ambassador Negroponte on Tuesday,
exercising the authorities of the DNI will not be easy. Setting
the precedent of a strong DNI will likely mean the two of you
may have to break some china. Start with the cups and the
saucers first and then we'll see what happens. I am confident,
however, that you and the Ambassador are the right team for
this job.
With that said, I welcome you to the Committee and look
forward to your testimony.
I now recognize the distinguished Vice Chairman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, VICE CHAIRMAN
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
welcome, General Hayden.
One of the things that is not in my statement, but which I
really feel strongly about and have said repeatedly, is that
the combination of Ambassador Negroponte and you, sir, is an
absolutely magnificent combination, because he brings the
diplomatic, intuitive, political, how do you get people to
agree to do things they don't want to do, and you bring with
you all of the military, the intelligence, all of that, and the
managerial skills--which he also has. The two of you working
together strikes me as quite a remarkable and excellent team.
Now there are three other deputies, and I want to ask you
about that in the question period.
But I can say what a good choice the President made in both
of you, together. Each of you is strong on your own. Together,
you're going to, I think, be able to make enormous changes in
our intelligence community.
Interestingly, over the period that I've been here, this is
only the second time you've appeared in public, which is the
way our business sort of works. But I'm very glad that we could
do this the same week as Ambassador Negroponte, because the two
of you, as I said, make an incredibly impressive tandem.
I like the fact that you're a strong manager. You came to
the NSA at a time of real crisis. A short time after your
arrival, the problems became so severe that the agency's
computer system crashed, and we were left without any ability
to process signals intelligence for 3 days. Now, in our world,
that's called a huge crisis and a great danger.
Just having arrived, you guided the agency through the
emergency and then set about overhauling the NSA from top to
bottom, unafraid to make changes.
The Director of Central Intelligence and the Secretary of
Defense have had such confidence in your abilities that they
have extended your tour of duty at NSA three times.
The challenges that you have faced in reforming the NSA
should go a long way toward preparing for the job that we all
have ahead of us. You've had to fight an entrenched bureaucracy
resistant to input from outsiders. You've had to break old
patterns of behavior. You've had to create new structures,
which you've been kind enough--or your team--to show me. And
you've had to create new procedures to bring NSA into the
information age. All of that, you have done.
It's not always been a smooth process, but you've continued
to push, to cajole, coerce and occasionally force those changes
to take place.
At Ambassador Negroponte's hearing on Tuesday, I, as the
Chairman indicated, listed a number of points which I want to
go through also.
First, I think you must create the structures and
procedures needed to ensure that our intelligence is timely and
objective and independent of political considerations. This is
all required by law in the National Security Act as amended by
the Intelligence Reform Act. This is your mission. You must
succeed in order to restore the intelligence community's
reputation, not that it is damaged as much as some would have
people think, but there's a lot of work to be done there.
Second, you have to take the blueprint provided by the
intelligence reform bill and you have to use it to transform 15
agencies, bring them together. That sounds like a very
impossible thing to do, but I think that you're going to come
very close to being able to do that, the two of you and the
other three deputies and the management team at the DNI.
You have to make them into a real community, with central
coordination, central direction, an ability to have access to
information, as the Chairman indicated, not just sharing. But
then there will be caveats for that, because sometimes there
really is a need-to-know basis. You understand very well how
the complexities of all of that have to be balanced.
Third, you must instill a sense of accountability
throughout the intelligence community. I think all of us on
this Committee feel that it's been a long time now since 9/11
and there's been no accountability for 9/11.
This isn't just about 9/11. It's about the next 30 or 40
years. The concept of accountability, I think, has to built in
early. Accountability is not just punishing people or
dismissing people. It's also about encouraging people who have
done good work, letting them know about it and making sure that
others in the agencies know about that. People--that's the
nature of people. They need to be rewarded when they've done
well. I think that it just goes to say that when people haven't
done well, they also need to know that.
Fourth, you will need to develop a comprehensive and
consistent legal and operational policy on the detention,
interrogation and rendition of prisoners across the
intelligence community. The intelligence we gain through these
interrogations is too important to allow shortcomings in this
program. I trust you share my concern and I hope you'll assist
our Committee in undertaking a constructive inquiry into the
detention, interrogation and rendition practices.
Finally, you and Ambassador Negroponte are assuming your
positions in the midst of Congressional consideration of the
President's intelligence budget for fiscal 2006. You had input
to the NSA budget, obviously, but now you're going to be
responsible for spending across a huge community. I urged the
Ambassador to review the priorities and submit a budget
amendment if necessary. It may not now be necessary, because of
a meeting that took place yesterday.
When there are budget deficiencies, whether they be at
supplemental time or otherwise, that you will be very sure that
we know about that, because this Committee wants the
intelligence community to work. We now have the vehicle for it
in which it can work--through which it can work. The vehicle is
not entirely proscribed by law, and that's good, because that
means that the two of you and your colleagues will be able to
fill that out in a way which is more intelligent than perhaps
the way the Congress would do it.
The Ambassador is going to need your expertise not only to
understand the intricacies of nuances of the intelligence
business, but to navigate the minefields of all of these
rivalries. He understands a lot of that intuitively already,
because he's a real pro, and there's not much that goes on in
government that he misses.
So you're taking on a great responsibility. I have enormous
confidence in you to take up this task. I was absolutely
delighted when you were appointed, and I welcome you and look
forward to your statement.
Chairman Roberts. Thank you, Senator Rockefeller.
I now recognize the distinguished Senator from Maryland,
Senator Mikulski, a valued Member of this Committee.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA A. MIKULSKI
Senator Mikulski. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm
happy to be here with my colleague from Pennsylvania,
Congressman Murtha, who I served with.
First of all, it's a great honor to introduce Lieutenant
General Michael Hayden to the Committee, to be the Principal
Deputy Director of National Intelligence. I've come to know
General Hayden well as the Director of the National Security
Agency. Maryland is very proud to be the home of the National
Security Agency.
We, in Maryland, are very proud of the fact that we have
Federal agencies that are devoted to saving lives and saving
communities, whether it's the National Institutes of Health
that come up with new cures to help our people, whether it's
the FDA that stands sentry over our food and our drug supply,
and also the National Security Agency that is the greatest
eavesdropper to protect our country against predatory attacks
when the homeland and our troops and our assets.
General Hayden has absolutely distinguished himself as both
a soldier as well as a leader at the National Security Agency.
I've come to know him as a soldier, as a patriot, and an
intelligence professional--and absolutely as a leader and a
manager.
He grew up in a blue collar neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and
brings those all-American values to the table and puts those
values into action. His dad was a welder, and through his
family he knew that in this country hard work, merit, devotion
to duty would really take you somewhere.
Attending the Catholic high school, he was a student and an
athlete. He went to Duquesne University, and came into the
military through the Air Force ROTC, and there he served in a
variety of military roles, each time assuming greater
responsibility. It's there for the resume to speak for itself.
He has served in direct support of the warfighters and in
sensitive, diplomatic roles. He served in lead command at
military bases. He's had senior, sensitive national security
positions in Washington. He even led a military delegation to
negotiate with North Korean generals. If you learn to negotiate
with North Korean generals, he's learned to navigate the intel
system.
Most impressively has been his accomplishment as the leader
at NSA. Long before 9/11, General Hayden was embarked not only
on reform, but on transformation. This was an agency, when he
came to his post, that was an analog agency in a digital world.
It had served the country fantastically through the cold war,
protecting our country. But a cold war orientation had to be
transformed. He led that transformation at breathtaking speed,
through a series of technological innovations, a series of
technological crises, and at the same time streamlining the
organization, recognizing the duty of the cold warriors and yet
bringing in that next generation of the cyber warriors that
we've come to depend upon.
He looked for the best people, the best ideas, valued the
employees. He also turned to academia and turned to the private
sector if necessary to get that cutting edge of the people and
technology.
At the same time, he connected to the world of public
information. The NSA has had an incredible mystique. Books like
``The Puzzle Palace'' has been written about it. Even Dan Brown
of ``The DaVinci Code'' has written about NSA, called ``The
Digital Fortress.''
What General Hayden did, by engaging with the press, he
demystified the agency without declassifying the agency--a
pretty spectacular feat. He provided a more public face in the
national security mission, and what that did was build
confidence that we were truly standing sentry in our own
country.
Members of this Committee are well aware of the historic
accomplishments of NSA, as well as the future challenges the
agency must confront, including the exploding volume of global
communication, the sophistication of our enemies. General
Hayden has an understanding that is a tremendous understanding
of where we are, not only on signals intelligence, but where we
are.
He understands how we need to support the warfighter, but
also the great strategic thinking that needs to be done.
He's never been willing to rest on yesterday's achievements
or remain satisfied with today's capabilities--always thinking
and planning about how we can do better today, and how we can
be spectacular tomorrow.
That's why I'm here to endorse his nomination before the
Committee and we want to recognize that, for every soldier that
serves our country, that soldier, 24/7, particularly in the
jobs that General Hayden has had, has been his wonderful wife,
who we mean to recognize for her service to the country here,
and also to his devoted family.
So I look forward to not only introducing him, but to
voting for him and then working with all of us to keep our
country safer and stronger.
Thank you.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Mikulski, we thank you.
It is now my privilege to recognize my former House
colleague and fellow Marine, the distinguished gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Murtha.
Jack, semper fi.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN P. MURTHA
Representative Murtha. Thank you very much. Semper fi, Mr.
Chairman.
I have a plaque on my desk that says, ``Victory is complete
knowledge of the enemy.'' I was in the intelligence field in
Vietnam, and I've worked on this subcommittee that funds NSA
for 25 years. I've never seen an individual that had more
integrity, more responsibility and more straightforward than
Mikey Hayden. He told me not to say Mikey Hayden. His brother
calls him that.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Roberts. Well, rest assured I'm not going to call
him Mikey either.
[Laughter.]
General Hayden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Representative Murtha. This guy has got, I think, one of
the most difficult jobs in the government today.
We have a small agency in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, called
the National Drug Intelligence Center. We have five agencies--
the FBI, the CIA, the National Guard. We had to have the
Attorney General come in and tell them to work together. What
you said, Mr. Chairman, as you started out was they all find
every excuse in the world not to work together, stovepipe the
information, not give access to anybody else.
This guy took a cold war organization and he had an
explosion of technology which he had to get under control. We
watched the money as closely as we can. He did it within the
bounds of the amount of money that was given to him. Sometimes
we had to cut back a little bit. But as a whole, I've never
seen a better manager.
So the team that Senator Rockefeller talked about is a
marvelous team. I hated to say--I told Vice President Cheney
this the other day--I hated to see him pull Ambassador
Negroponte out of Iraq right at such a crucial time. Well, he
assured me the new guy is going to be just as good.
The point is this job is absolutely the most important job
that you could possibly be put into, because intelligence is
the key to the way we have our resources deployed. We look at
the intelligence briefing from the very start and we say, OK,
where are we going to spend our money? How are we going to
address the threat?
So I'm impressed. I highly endorse General Hayden, and I
know that the Senate is going to ratify that endorsement. I
appreciate the opportunity to be before this august body, even
though it's a step down from the House, what the hell.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Roberts. I must admit that when I was a Member of
the other body I did once refer to the Senate as the cave of
the winds.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Roberts. But Senator Dole and Senator Kassebaum
set me straight real quick.
Representative Murtha, thank you very much. Thank you, too,
Senator Mikulski for being here to introduce this very fine
nominee.
General Hayden, you may proceed. I would like to ask that
you begin by introducing the family members that you have with
you here today.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL MICHAEL V. HAYDEN,
PRINCIPAL DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL
INTELLIGENCE-
DESIGNATE
General Hayden. All right, Senator.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Mr. Chairman, just before that,
I'm glad that the Chairman made that suggestion. But I think
that your testimony now gives you an opportunity to rebut the
withering criticism that you've had to withstand so far.
[Laughter.]
General Hayden. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity,
Senator. Thank you.
Let me introduce the members who are here with me today.
First of all my wife, Janine, who is a counselor by training
and frankly has been a supporter for me and a partner in my
work for over 37 years now. At NSA, she personally took on the
responsibility of supporting Agency families. She began the
work before the attacks in 2001, and really accelerated it
after September 11th. She formed the Agency's Family Action
Board, and continues to serve on the board as an adviser.
I've got my brother Harry here, and our daughter Margaret,
who is an officer in the Air Force Reserves. She has two
brothers, our sons, but they couldn't be with us here today.
But I'm honored that these members of the family could be
present.
Chairman Roberts. Please proceed with your statement, sir.
General Hayden. Well, thank you.
Chairman Roberts. We welcome your family.
General Hayden. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
I've been before you many times before, but not quite in
circumstances like today.
First of all, let me say I'm honored to be introduced by
Congressman Murtha. The folks back home in Pittsburgh will be
elated that I'd been introduced by such a distinguished western
Pennsylvanian.
I'm also very honored to have received the very kind
remarks of a very good friend and supporter, Senator Barbara
Mikulski. She's taken both me and the Agency, the National
Security Agency, under her wing and she's a true supporter of
intelligence and the job it does to protect the Nation.
It's clearly a privilege for me to be nominated by the
President to be the first Principal Deputy Director of National
Intelligence. Frankly, it's a little bit daunting. I know a lot
of people who will be depending on us--myself, the Ambassador
and the rest of the team--to do well in tough circumstances.
Senator Rockefeller, my brother Harry thought that this was
so important that on the day of the President's announcement he
took his delivery truck into a truck stop on I-79 in
Morgantown. He had to drop a $10 tip on a cup of coffee to get
the waitress to turn off ESPN in favor of CSPAN. At the end of
that, though, after the announcement, she watched it with him,
and told him to wish me good luck.
A day after the announcement, I got an e-mail from a
boyhood friend, a fellow with whom I was inseparable until he
moved away from the neighborhood when we were in the sixth
grade. We lived on the flood plain of the Allegheny River on
Pittsburgh's north side, a district called the Ward right
between Heinz Field and PNC park today.
My friend wrote in his e-mail, and I'm quoting him now,
``The Ward, the street parties, the picnics, Clark candy bars
and Teaberry gum thrown out the fifth floor windows to kids
cheering on the street, and the damp train trestle on the way
to and from school are the things that you are made of. You
will never get too far from them. It's those things that you'll
be protecting.''
No disrespect to the Committee, but I think it's going to
be hard for you to put more pressure on me than Jimmy Heffley
did with his e- mail to me.
Ambassador Negroponte appeared before you earlier this
week, and he made clear the importance of U.S. intelligence.
This Committee already knows full well the challenges being
faced by American intelligence, and I won't try to catalogue
them all here.
So we find ourselves as a community in a very interesting
place--never more challenged by the world in which we find
ourselves and never more important to the safety of the
republic we're committed to defend.
We seem to be surrounded by dilemmas. We want more
cohesion. We want a better sense of direction throughout our
community. In fact, the WMD commission said that we were a
community in name only.
We don't want so much centralization that it leads to group
think or a herd mentality when it comes to analysis. We need to
aggressively develop more effective ways to connect the dots,
even when there may not be so many dots and those that exist
may be hidden in the noise. But we should also not base our
analysis on past context alone or mere inertia or isolated data
points.
We want to strengthen the center of the community, give the
DNI real power--certainly more power than we ever gave the
DCI--but we're also to preserve the chain of command.
We all know that the enemy may be inside the gates and that
job one is to defend the homeland. But we're also to ensure the
privacy rights of our citizens and closely control any things
like data search tools that we might have. I could go on, but
you get the picture. It's going to be very hard work.
When I testified before the House Intelligence Committee
last August, I said that the American intelligence community
had been governed by the principle of consensus for almost half
a century. It wasn't actually a bad principle for most of that
time. It gave us buy-in. It balanced competing needs and
priorities. It gave us stability.
Now, as an airman, I know the value of stability when you
design an aircraft. In many aircraft, stability is an absolute
virtue. Now, when I talk about this in larger audiences, I
usually ask the audience what they think the opposite of
stability is. Their response is usually very predictable. They
say, instability.
In fact, that's not true. When it comes to designing an
aircraft, the opposite of stability is maneuverability, and
maneuverability is a virtue, just like stability. The IC needs
more maneuverability. But I think we've all decided as a Nation
it's hard to make sharp turns by consensus. Consensus is rarely
bold and many times it's just wrong.
So last summer when the 9/11 Commission reported, in
August, when the President announced his support for a DNI, and
this fall when you enacted intelligence reform legislation, it
was clear to me that we were dampening the principle of
consensus in favor more clear lines of authority and
responsibility when it comes to running the American
intelligence community.
I told the House in August that if we went down this path,
three major principles would have to apply.
First, if we're going to go ahead and dismantle the DCI and
the informal authority he exercised--because he also headed up
CIA--then we would have to be very sure that we've aggressively
codified the authorities we wanted the new Director of National
Intelligence to have.
Second, I told the House Committee, the new DNI would need
robust authority over those big, muscular national collection
agencies, like NSA and NGA and CIA's Directorate of Operations.
In terms of collection, you want unity of effort and economies
of scale.
Third, I said, this new structure would have to accommodate
the needs of America's combat forces, needs that daily seem to
redefine standards for relevance and timeliness.
I personally believe that the legislation signed by the
President gives us a solid framework within which to build for
each of those principles. The office of the DNI has real
authority to task both the collection and analysis of
intelligence. The DNI has more authority over the budget than
was ever exercised by the DCI. The DNI has policy, security,
information-sharing and personnel tools that never before
existed in one place.
I was careful to describe the legislation as providing a
framework. In each of these areas, the powers of the DNI will
have to be built by what I have called case law--the concrete
use of his new authorities early and often and in actual
circumstances.
I'll do my role, should I be confirmed, to support
Ambassador Negroponte in this effort. He brings a wonderful
personal history of service to this task along with years of
government and policy experience.
I believe I was chosen by the President because he thought
I knew the neighborhood. I pledge that I'll use that knowledge
to support the Ambassador in this effort.
For the first time in the history of our community--and I
think this is the big difference--for the first time, this
legislation has made governing our intelligence community
someone's full-time job. That's a fundamental difference. We're
not without tools beyond the legislation itself. In my 6 years
at NSA, I've learned just how talented a workforce we have
there, a workforce that represents the kind of people we have
throughout the intelligence community. I've often said that the
real power of NSA goes down in the elevators tonight.
In fact, when asked recently to summarize in one phrase
whatever success we had at the Agency, I responded that I had
simply empowered our people, and our success has come from
their empowerment. That can apply across the community.
The Ambassador and I are also blessed with the support of
you--with the support of Congress. During the debate on the
intelligence reform bill, I was personally impressed with the
passion with which so many Members regarded this subject. In
preparing for these hearings, I've met with many more Members
who showed deep interest in the specifics of the statute and in
its implementation. More than one Member has publicly told us
to--I'm quoting here now--``be in charge.'' We've also been
urged to exercise clear, even charismatic leadership.
Finally, beyond Congress, we have the strong support of the
President. His words on the morning when he announced
Ambassador Negroponte's and my appointments were quite
specific: The DNI will set the budgets. The DNI will have
access to the President.
I have no illusions about the weeks and months ahead. We
have to set up an office, build an organization, hire the right
kind of people--and I should add, from inside and outside of
government--and begin to make some tough decisions.
We have to exercise the power that you and the President
have given us without creating a new layer of bureaucracy. We
have to be authoritative, and we have to be right. The DNI must
ensure that we have the information dominance to protect
America, its people, its values and its friends.
Now, I know this Committee will remain very interested in
our work. In fact, I know that several reports are due almost
imminently from the original legislation.
I look forward to working with the Committee in the days
ahead. Now, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.
Chairman Roberts. General, we thank you for your very fine
statement.
The Committee will now proceed to questions. Each Member
will be recognized by the order of their arrival. Each Member
will be granted 7 minutes and, if necessary, we will have a
second round.
General, in terms of cooperation with Committee, do you
agree to appear before the Committee here or in other venues
when invited?
General Hayden. Yes, sir.
Chairman Roberts. Do you agree to send intelligence
community officials to appear before the Committee and
designated staff when invited?
General Hayden. Yes, sir.
Chairman Roberts. Do you agree to provide documents or any
material requested by the Committee in order for it to carry
out its oversight and its legislative responsibilities?
General Hayden. Yes, sir.
Chairman Roberts. Will you ensure that all intelligence
community elements provide such material to the Committee when
requested?
General Hayden. Yes, sir.
Chairman Roberts. In your pre-hearing answers, you
indicated that you would recommend to the DNI that he quicken
the pace of increasing information access. Both the Vice
Chairman and I have talked to that at length, and you as well.
What do you think specifically should be done in this area?
General Hayden. Senator, we've thought a lot about this at
NSA. You mentioned we would be big a player--NSA would be a big
player in this. You were very kind by not mentioning that from
time to time NSA's been pretty conservative about the sharing
of information.
Chairman Roberts. Well, actually, that's my No. 3 question,
but you go ahead.
[Laughter.]
General Hayden. But we've done a lot of thinking about this
and a lot of acting on it in the last 2 to 3 years.
Let me give you a sense as to how I think we ought to think
about it now as a community. Frankly, I don't think it's a
question of sources and methods. We know how to do that, in
terms of protection. Even in terms of signals intelligence,
which has a lot of privacy sensitivities related to it, I
actually think we can protect U.S. person privacy. So I don't
think that's an unsurmountable obstacle at all.
We've got challenges with just raw IT--just wiring up the
system. We can overcome that, as well.
I think the fundamental issue is to move out of a mindset
in which each of our collection agencies wanted to hold on to
information until they had perfected it. By the way, that's a
virtue, that's not a vice. That's not a sin. The folks at NSA--
I'll speak of them because I know them best--would get an
intercept and they would want to squeeze the last ounce of
value out of it, because they knew they were the best in the
world at doing that, before they attempted to share it with
other parts of the community.
We've become very accustomed at sharing information at what
I'll call the product level. What we've done at NSA in the last
2 to 3 years is to change that and to begin to share
information not when we're done with it, but at the earliest
point of consumability by others.
Now, on one's ever asked me for the beeps and squeaks, for
unprocessed information. No one's ever asked me for an
intercept that has not yet been decrypted. But what we're
moving to is a point where, at the point in which that
information can be consumed by another, that other needs to
have access, data access, as you described, to that
information.
Let me go one step further and define consumability.
I would define consumability as the point in which that
information is already of operational value to someone else or
someone else has adequate skills to add their own value to it.
That adjective ``adequate'' is very important, because in most
cases, again speaking of SIGINT, their skills at adding value
probably won't match that of NSA.
Our new role at the agency is earliest point of
consumability, consumbability defined as the point at which no
more value needs to be added for that to be useful or the
consumer is adequately competent to add their own value. That's
the kind of approach that I would urge.
One additional caution, Senator. You just can't throw open
the doors and make the information created by the collection
agencies look a lot like Home Depot, where people get to roll
the cart through and take what they want, otherwise we'll wind
up looking like 6-year-olds playing soccer--we'll all be around
the ball.
We can do a lot more in terms of data access, as you and
Senator Rockefeller have already emphasized.
Chairman Roberts. On independent cost estimates, General,
Agency cost estimates for procuring major systems such as
satellites routinely fall far below the actual cost of
procuring those systems.
To solve this problem, Congress enacted a law requiring
that independent cost estimates be performed for all
intelligence community programs costing more than $500 million.
It also requires that the President budget to these independent
cost estimates. It's our understanding that only 12 of the 16
programs for which independent cost estimates have been
completed are funded at required levels for fiscal year 2006.
Will you commit to full compliance with the requirements of
this provision?
General Hayden. I will, Senator, and I will tell you we've
had personal experience with this with some major programs at
NSA. There indeed have been deltas between our estimate and
what the ICEs, the independent cost estimates, have come up
with.
Chairman Roberts. According to the independent cost
estimates that have been completed, the fiscal year 2006 budget
request is substantially underfunded. This means that work that
should be done in fiscal year 2006 will have to be deferred to
future years, which in turn means that program costs will
escalate, and the budgeting shortfall for major acquisitions
across the future years defense plan grows into the multiple
billions of dollars.
How would you recommend the DNI close these spending gaps?
What's your advice to the DNI?
General Hayden. Well, as you have already suggested,
Senator, the first thing, even with the 2006 budget that's
already on the Hill, is take a quick, firm look to see if any
adjustments need to be made in that.
He will have the opportunity to have a firm hand on the
2007 program build and, frankly, although we're still getting
oriented ourselves in our discussion of the budget, it is the
2007 program that we view as the one that we can most
immediately put the DNI's stamp on.
The legislation gives the DNI, again, as I said earlier,
authority that's never been in one place before. The milestone
decision authority, for example, that legislation gives to the
DNI, was scattered throughout the community prior to the
legislation. That's a powerful tool and one that I think we
will use.
Chairman Roberts. I have a question on that later. My time
has expired. I have two questions, so on the second round I
will ask those questions.
I now recognize the Vice Chairman.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Hayden, as I indicated, you start from a very deep
basis of knowledge about the intelligence community. That is
one of the reasons why I think the two of you are going to be
very strong.
I have to assume, therefore, that you've given yourself--
just in thinking out loud with yourself and some of your
colleagues, as well as, I understand, you've have a number of
conversations with Ambassador Negroponte about how the office
of the DNI should be organized.
Now, you will have, I believe, four other deputies. So
there's a lot of flexibility, as there should be, in the way
that this DNI team can be set up. I'd be interested in, to
whatever extent you feel comfortable, getting some of your
thoughts about that--a balance of skills.
General Hayden. Again, as you say, this is all very
preliminary. We've had broad discussions about it. I'd offer
the view that whatever I say to you this morning isn't even in
pencil. To the degree that it's down anywhere, it's in chalk.
So it's a very, very light hand.
Rather than talk about the specific boxes and the titles, I
think I'd be a little more comfortable talking about the broad
functions I think we need to tend to. You're right, the law
gives us four. You're also right, the law gives us great
flexibility. It doesn't identify what those four will be--and
that's a real blessing. So thank you for that.
I would lay out maybe four or five broad, general areas and
then we're going to have to figure out exactly how to fit them
in the structure.
One, in terms of operations, I would work it back from
something I'll call, for our purposes of this morning, customer
outcomes. You want to empower someone to tend to outcomes
rather than your own inputs, rather than just the performance
of this community. What's the impact of this community on those
we are designed to serve? So I would think we'd have to tend to
something, like I said, that I'll call customer outcomes.
To create those outcomes, the next step I would describe is
analysis. Then collection. I personally kind of wrestled with
the thought, do I want to put analysis and collection together
and just create, maybe, a J-3 as a director of operations?
Frankly, I think the management style--and again, I'm
speaking personally now--the management style you want over
collection is a bit different than the one you want over
analysis. Just give me a sentence or two to explain.
With regard to collection, you want economies of scale, and
you want unity of effort. You want efficiencies. You don't want
that with analysis. You want competition. You want some things
that a management specialist might actually call redundancy
when it comes to analysis. You want a less firm hand as you
allow the community to create alternative views.
So, in NSA parlance, we would have called those three
functions I just described to you as: Get it, know it and use
it.
Then I would suggest a fourth broad function. It would be
build it. Those are the management functions that you've put
into the law. You've grouped together, for the DNI, H.R.
training, acquisition, programs, budgets. I think that's
another broad area that has to be tended to.
Then the fifth one I would offer--and again I realize there
are four big boxes to work with--the fifth one I would offer is
the one that is encompassed when the legislation said there
should be a CIO, a chief information officer. My sense is
that's far more than a senior, a secretary, a desk and a phone,
that you want the CIO to be an empowered player, because so
much of what it is you've tasked us to do deals with
information. I would broadly picture the CIO taking care of the
wiring, the IT. But beyond that as well.
My sense is I would want him to have a powerful voice in
both security and sharing so that you don't kind of get the
``He said, she said'' dilemma when it comes to how you want to
deal with information access.
So those are the broad areas, Senator, I think. We want to
make sure whatever organization chart we finally come up with,
all those things are well handled.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. You mentioned that competition
can be good--if not in collection, then certainly in analysis.
One of the things that I helped get into the intelligence
reform bill had to do with red-teaming, and that's contrary
views. It was watered down when it finally arrived and was
signed.
I'm interested--and I think that you've done this at the
NSA--in how you view the importance of formalizing that
contrarian or sort of opposing analytical views, competition.
General Hayden. You're right. We've done some things along
these lines. Even in a collection agency like NSA, we really do
empower some contrarians, not just to be contrary, but to raise
questions like, well, have you ever looked at it this way, and
to kind of pull your center of gravity of analysis maybe 20 or
30 degrees off to the side--and now things begin to look a
little bit differently.
It's something that I believe in. I believe the Ambassador
believes in that and I think you'll be pleased with the degree
to which we are creative within that analytic box that the law
lays out for us.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Mikulski.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. She's not here.
Chairman Roberts. I beg your pardon.
Senator DeWine.
Senator DeWine. No questions, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Roberts. I like your style.
Senator DeWine. Yes, sir.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Levin is not here.
Senator Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
General, I believe it's safe to say that you're very widely
respected and it would be hard for me to see that your
confirmation is going to be anything but unanimous. I hope that
enables you to see that you go in with a tremendous vote of
confidence by all of us, which I think is important.
I'd like to ask you this question. Ambassador Negroponte,
by virtue of the fact of where he's been, was necessarily
somewhat vague in the answers to some of the questions. I
understand that.
You, on the other hand, have been here, have been in very
high levels for a substantial period of time and have had an
opportunity to see the overview of the intelligence community
of this Nation.
What do you believe--and I said, ``what'' rather than
``who''--what do you believe is responsible for the enormous
failures of intelligence surrounding Iraq and weapons of mass
destruction?
General Hayden. Ma'am, that's a very difficult question and
it's one that I've personally looked into. After the war and
after the evidentiary trail began to play out the way it did, I
brought our folks in, NSA folks.
As you well know, these aren't the final analysts. They
don't put it all together. They look at the SIGINT and deal
with that--honest people, very hardworking people, incredibly
conscientious people, and I think that applies across the
board.
I asked them questions: How confident were you on the
morning of 19 March with the Nation going to war? I said, put
everything outside of your mind. Not that he was a bad man.
It's just WMD. Where were you, in your heart, on a scale of 1
to 10? Without betraying their privacy, I got some pretty high
numbers. They had confidence.
We dug down deeper into that. Again, I'm kind of speaking
from NSA experience but that's what I've had. It's very clear.
It was clear to them, in fact it was clear to me before the
war, that we had a mountain of evidence about WMD from which
the community drew conclusions--but that the mountain was
essentially inferential.
Senator Feinstein. I don't understand what you mean by
inferential.
General Hayden. No smoking gun. No smoking gun. It was
indirect. It was oblique. It was dual-use chemicals. It was
dual-use equipment. It was suspicious equipment bought in a
very suspicious way.
How does a SIGINT analyst decide whether that's done to
bust sanctions, to keep it secret from the rest of the Iraqi
government, or to acquire precursor chemicals for weapons of
mass destruction.
I think what happened, in each of our disciplines, people
became expert in the information that their discipline provided
and yet we didn't have a view into the trail of evidence in the
other disciplines.
I'll speak personally. I'm at the NFIB. I'm at the National
Foreign Intelligence Board. I raise my hand. I vote on the NIE.
We had discussions, and you well know from the Committee's
investigations, the discussions were spirited.
Frankly, I went in there carrying a brief, carrying a
portfolio for the signals intelligence. There was nothing in
that NIE that signals intelligence contradicted. Signals
intelligence ranged from ambiguous to confirmatory of the
conclusions in the National Intelligence Estimate.
Now, if you take my attitude and my view of that and you
spread it around the room with every piece of the community
looking at their piece, you begin to get a sense of some
segmentation, some fragmentation and the difficulty of getting
a holistic view.
We've taken some big strides to fix that. Before I go to a
meeting now of the National Foreign Intelligence Board, I have
to sit and read pages of, for example, CIA/DO information on
their evaluation of their sources that contributed to each of
the conclusions of the Estimate.
So I would put the fault at we had a process that wasn't
good enough. We had a process that didn't allow the right
wholeness of view, a holistic view. We ended up where we were.
Senator Feinstein. I still have a minute or so. Thank you.
The DNI has been given milestone decision authority over
all programs in the NIP, to be jointly exercised with the
Secretary of Defense for programs in DOD. As someone with a
long experience with major program acquisition and as, in
effect, the chief operating officer of the intelligence
community, how will you work with the Director to gain control
over cost and time overruns?
General Hayden. As I alluded to in an earlier question, I
actually think this is one of the kind of the hidden powers in
the law. It's just a small section.
Believe me, the Senate, in its wisdom, took the milestone
decision authority of NSA away from us about 2 years ago. It's
a difference. It makes a big difference. They put it in the
Department of Defense and we've worked with Secretary Wynne in
terms of our MDA.
We worked very productively with him, I might add, by the
way. But the absence of that authority on the desktop of the
Director of NSA, that gets noticed very quickly.
It's something I would strongly recommend to the DNI that
he--we--hire the professional staff competent to fully make use
of that authority. I think that that's going to be one of the
key powers that the DNI--the office of the DNI--has.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Levin.
Senator Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to you, General, and congratulations on this
appointment.
Many of us have been frustrated by the lack of
responsiveness on the part of some parts of the intelligence
community and some other Federal agencies to Congress when
there are requests for documents and requests for
declassification.
There have been recent problems getting documents on
subjects ranging from intelligence assessments on Iraq to
detainee abuse. In one instance, the Armed Services Committee
waited more than a year to get answers for the record from the
former DCI. In other instances, the CIA promised to provide
documents and then failed to do so for up to a year. It's
simply unacceptable.
I brought these facts to the attention of the current DCI,
Porter Goss. He said he would look into it and he'd make sure
that materials would be provided promptly, and he did what he
promised.
In his letter to me of April 6th, this is what he wrote:
``There is no excuse for such delays. I have conveyed to my
staff that this is not how the agency will treat requests.'' I
commend him for that letter and for his prompt response.
It's a standard that I hope the entire intelligence
community will adhere to. I want to know whether or not, if you
are confirmed, whether you will commit to ensuring, to the best
of your ability, timely and responsive information to the
Members of this Committee, and will you make every effort to
respond to requests for existing documents within weeks not
months?
General Hayden. Yes, sir. I fully support that. I actually
think NSA's got a decent track record in trying to turn those
kind of requests for information around.
I know there are legal procedures that have to be respected
and who on the Committee is briefed and so on, but outside of
that, I don't see what the excuse would be for delaying the
responses.
Senator Levin. General, I thank you for that.
A year and a half ago, the Defense Authorization Act
removed final milestone decision activity from major
acquisition programs from the Director of NSA, which is your
current position, and vested that authority in the Under
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.
Now, in your new position, they give you something of a
different perspective on that shift.
Can you tell us how has that worked out?
General Hayden. Frankly, we were surprised when the
Congress made the decision. Acting like most large
organizations do when a piece of power is pulled away from
them, we objected and marshalled arguments as to why we opposed
that. Frankly, I think we had some good arguments at the time.
It adds a burden of paperwork. I will tell you that,
without argument, you're staking up a lot of documents and a
lot of three-ring binders in order to get a decision. But that
costs in flexibility.
That said, Secretary Wynne, who exercised MDA over us,
could not have been more wonderful in how he did it. He did it
in a very, very cooperative spirit. Frankly, we've learned, as
an agency, from some of the things that he's pointed out to us.
I would like that experience to be the model for what the
Office of the DNI now must do with milestone decision authority
for the community, so that that MDA power isn't a burden to
each of the agencies, that in fact it is an enabler.
That's going to require talent. We're going to have to have
some very good people on our staff.
Senator Levin. Thank you.
General, this morning's New York Times had an article which
troubled me, about the number of times in which communications
that had been intercepted by the NSA were released to John
Bolton. I was troubled by the number of times that this
happened, frankly. But since you're here and you're in a
position to give us some facts on this subject, I want to ask
you a number of questions about it.
I gather that, according to the article, access to names
may be authorized by NSA only in response to special requests,
and these are not common, particularly from policymakers.
That's the quote in there. Is that an accurate statement?
General Hayden. I think that's a very accurate description.
In fact, I read Doug Jehl's article. I think Doug laid it out
in a very clear way.
The way it works, Senator, is that we are required to
determine what is minimized U.S. person identity. Now, there is
a whole body of law with regard to protecting U.S. privacy. But
in an agency like ourselves, it is not uncommon for us to come
across information to, from or about what we would call a
protected person--a U.S. person. Then the rules kick in as to
what you can do with that information.
The rule of thumb in almost all cases is that you minimize
it, and you simply refer to ``named U.S. person'' or ``named
U.S. official'' in the report that goes out.
Senator Levin. How often did Mr. Bolton request the names?
General Hayden. I don't know.
Senator Levin. Do you have a record of that?
General Hayden. We would have a record of it. Interestingly
enough, I double-checked this this morning after reading the
article just to make sure I had this right. Because I do
approve, from time to time, the release of U.S. person
identity. It's not very often. I have to do it when the
identity is released to a U.S. law enforcement agency. If it's
just done for foreign intelligence purposes, it's about three
layers below me in the NSA org chart.
Senator Levin. Was there an unusual number of accesses
requested by Mr. Bolton compared to requests from other senior
officials?
General Hayden. I don't know that, Senator, I really don't.
The requests from Secretary Bolton were not of such a number
that they came to my attention.
Senator Levin. In other words, he obviously made requests.
You say that someone other than you would have approved those.
General Hayden. On a normal basis; that's right.
Senator Levin. But you do have records as to how often?
General Hayden. Yes, sir, we would.
Senator Levin. Thank you.
General Hayden. I should add that's a formal process.
That's just not a phone call.
Senator Levin. OK, thank you.
General Hayden. It's documented.
Senator Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Levin, I wanted to let you know
that in answer to the No. 3 question that I asked and the
general replied in terms of cooperating with the Committee--do
you agree to provide documents or any material requested by the
Committee in order for it to carry out its oversight and its
legislative responsibilities--we didn't put a timeframe on it,
but you have. His answer was an emphatic yes.
Senator Levin. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, welcome.
General Hayden. Thank you.
Senator Wyden. General, on your watch, the National
Security Agency implemented a program called Trailblazer to
modernize its information technology infrastructure. My
understanding is that there were serious cost overruns with
this program and that there were significant slippages in terms
of the program.
I'd like you to tell me when you became aware this was a
problem and what changes you put in place to root out the
inefficiencies. I also think that that may be one of the
reasons for the transfer of authority that colleagues have been
talking about.
So if you would, take us through what happened here, when
you found out about it, and what you did to turn the situation
around.
General Hayden. Sure, Senator.
If you look at the things we do at the agency, Trailblazer
is essentially about how we manage the vast volumes of data
that our collection systems can bring to our attention. We've
had pretty good success with the front-end in terms of
collection. I'm going to just leave it at that in open session.
The more success you have with regard to collection, the
more you're swimming in an ocean of data. So what Trailblazer
was essentially designed to do was to help us deal with masses
of information and to turn it into usable things for American
decisionmakers.
There is no other element out there in American society
that is dealing with volumes of data in this dimension. I had
several leaders of industry in and described our situation to
these leaders, very well-known folks in the American IT and
computing industry. I kind of, after describing our needs, kind
of got a whistle from them, saying, whoa, that's bigger than
anything we do. So it was quite a challenge.
We made the strategic decision, and, frankly, with the
support of both the SSCI and the HPSCI--and I think correctly--
made the strategic decision that we had to get out of the mode
of building these things ourselves. We were America's
information age organization during America's industrial age.
We're no longer in America's industrial age. We could go
outside and engage industry in doing this.
A personal view, now--looking back--we overachieved. We
defined our relationship with industry as simply the definition
of our requirements and then expect industry to come back and
deliver something. We learned within Trailblazer that when we
asked industry for something they had or something close to
what they already had, they were remarkable in providing us a
response, an outcome. When we asked them for something that no
one had yet invented, they weren't any better at inventing it
than we were doing it ourselves.
Let me give you a summary statement that I actually gave
our senior leadership yesterday. In fact, we had a conference
and I wanted to say a few things before the hearing today. I
focused on Trailblazer and related things.
I would say it's about 60-40, that 60 percent of the
difficulty in the program was just the raw difficulty of the
challenge.
Senator Wyden. How big were the costs overrun?
General Hayden. I'll take that for the record and give you
exact numbers as to how the costs----
Senator Wyden. Give me a general sense.
General Hayden. The costs were greater than anticipated, to
the tune of, I would say, in the hundreds of millions.
Senator Wyden. Pardon me, General. I only want you to go
into matters that can be discussed in open session.
General Hayden. Right, I understand.
The slippages were actually more dramatic than the costs.
As we slipped, the costs were pushed to the right. But I would
say we underestimated the costs by, I would say, a couple to
several hundred million in terms of the costs. Again, it was
what we actually encountered doing this. It was just far more
difficult than anyone anticipated.
Senator Wyden. So the learning experience says that when
you work with the private sector, you've got to change your
relationship.
General Hayden. To a far more cooperative one, that there's
a middle ground between doing it ourselves and just exporting
the problem.
The other thing I'd add that we learned, Senator, is that
we don't profit by trying to do moon shots, by trying to take
the great leap forward, that we can do a lot better with
incremental improvement, spiral development. That's where we
are now with the program.
Senator Wyden. Let me ask you about one other area, if I
might, General. I feel very strongly that it is possible to
fight terrorism ferociously without gutting the privacy and
civil rights of our citizens. What would you do as a Principal
Deputy at the DNI to protect the privacy rights of all
Americans?
General Hayden. I would ensure that our collection is--all
of our activities--is absolutely in compliance with all U.S.
law and the Constitution.
I would also suggest, Senator, that you should expect of me
that I'm right up to that line, that we're not pulling punches,
that we're using all of the authorities that Congress has given
to us in the law.
Senator Wyden. What measures did you take as the Director
at NSA to address privacy issues? This is as much to get a bit
of your history in terms of dealing with the issue as looking
forward.
General Hayden. We are, I would offer, the most aggressive
agency in the intelligence community when it comes to
protecting U.S. privacy. Part of that is virtue, but part of
that's the nature of our work. We just have to be that way.
I would suggest to you, Senator, that culturally,
culturally, it's more difficult to get NSA-ers to go up to the
full force of their authorities than it is to prevent them from
going over the line.
Senator Wyden. Let me see if I can ask one other one. Like
Senator Rockefeller, I have a great interest in technology. I'm
concerned that we have lagged behind technologically. What
would you do in this position to get the intelligence community
out front in terms of technology rather than lagging behind?
General Hayden. A couple of things seem obvious.
Rationalizing, organizing, making communal the various
technology efforts that are now being undertaken in each of the
different intelligence agencies, because of, not in spite of,
but because of NSA's experience with the private sector,
aggressively engage the private sector in the solution of these
problems.
Senator Wyden. I intend to support you, General. I look
forward to working with you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Roberts. Thank you, Senator.
With the acknowledgement of Senator Snowe, who is next,
Senator Hatch has requested that he make a brief statement, in
that he has a conflict. So I will, with the permission of
Senator Snowe, recognize Senator Hatch.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH
Senator Hatch. I will only take a minute. I just want to
personally express my gratitude for your service in the past
and for your willingness to take on this daunting job and for
your ability to be able to inspire and bring other people
together to do the work that really has to be done and for the
softness that you have but the toughness that you have as well.
Anybody who has graduated with a bachelor's and a master's
degree from Duquesne University, I'm for. I just want you to
know that. I used to play against some of their all-Americans.
They were always tough. A lot of my colleagues and partners
were law graduates from Duquesne University.
I just wanted to say how much I admire you. I'm grateful
for this service. I'm not going to ask any questions.
I appreciate my dear colleague from Maine allowing me to
just make these comments, so I can go on to another meeting.
General Hayden. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Hatch. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Snowe.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. OLYMPIA J. SNOWE
Senator Snowe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I too want to welcome you before the Committee, General
Hayden--most importantly that we will have the benefit and the
good fortune of your talent and experience to this position as
Deputy Director of the National Intelligence Agency. We really
appreciate the fact that you will be there.
Let me just ask you several questions that I think are
certainly going to be important to your mission and to that of
Ambassador Negroponte's.
One obviously that has been identified in the aftermath of
9/11 with the 9/11 Commission and, of course, our report and
the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission report, as well, the
failure to share information, rightly known as information
access at this point, which are one of the things that we
regrettably and tragically learned in the aftermath of 9/11.
They weren't connecting the dots, not sharing the information.
A lesson wasn't learned at that point. We then discovered
in the prewar assessments that there was a failure to share
information that led to very different and profoundly different
assessments.
That was certainly true in the biological weapons program.
Had all the analysts known about the credibility of Curveball,
for example, or the information regarding the UAVs, and the
failure to share this information, not only within an agency,
but across the intelligence community agency.
This is a fundamental failure that obviously is going to
need to be addressed. I would just wonder about your thoughts
and perspective in terms of how you think the community has to
be restructured so this failure never repeats itself again.
General Hayden. Yes, Senator. I actually think in many ways
we're fairly well down the road. I think what the Ambassador
and I would need to do is to kind of reinforce whatever
successes we've had, to continue along the trajectory that
we're already on.
In terms of sources, for example, I mentioned earlier, to
respond to a question, when we come to look at an NIE, a
National Intelligence Estimate, I've got far more visibility
into everyone else's sources and their evaluation of those
sources than I ever had a year or two back.
There are some cultural things. We'll have to deal with
that--some reluctances--not bad people, maybe just old habits.
There are some sources and methods things, but I've already
suggested we can work through that. There are some IT things.
That's nontrivial. It's going to take some time.
I think, as you know, we're pretty well wired north-south
inside of our organizations. There's not much plumbing left and
right, east-west. We're going to have to take care of that.
That's actually an aspect of an office of the DNI, who's
charged with looking across the community, would naturally look
at.
I don't naturally look at that as head of NSA. So there's
an advantage in the legislation and in the structure.
Finally--and this is more of an existential problem than it
is a cultural or an IT problem--the existential problem is
this. How do you give enough people enough access to the
information without not creating a symphony but creating a
cacophony?
Again, I'll speak from an NSA experience. People want
access to and the usual catch phrase for us is ``raw
traffic''--and they'll pound the table about that with me until
we open up the access to raw traffic and they discover it's all
in Arabic. At that point, you're not in a cultural question;
you're in an existential question. What is the ability of that
consumer to consume information that raw?
That's where we are now. I really think so. I need to be
careful. That's where we are intellectually. Intellectually,
all those other impediments I described for you, they're in our
rear view mirror. There's practically a lot of work to be done.
Intellectually, now, we're at the question, how do you make
that much information available to people who aren't as well
schooled--in this case, knowing Arabic--as the people who have
traditionally looked at it? That's the hard part right now.
That's where we are.
Senator Snowe. You think that, organizationally and
procedurally, you're in a much better position to be able to
make these cross-agency changes?
General Hayden. I would say that the trend line, even
without the DNI, is positive, although no one would be enthused
about the speed or the pace. With the DNI and with that both
structural view across the community and then some of the
powers that you put into the law, I would expect us to be able
to accelerate.
Senator Snowe. Turf battles, another area that has been
identified, even most recently by the Weapons of Mass
Destruction Commission's report, the Silberman-Robb report,
that underscored, again, that the counterterrorism threats and
analyses have to be thoroughly integrated if we're going to
counter any terrorism threat.
On the other hand, we're seeing numerous redundancies and
duplication among the agencies. As you know, we've created a
National Counterterrorism Center to replace the Terrorist
Threat Integration Center.
I was thinking about it the other day. The President first
indicated it was a major goal in the State of the Union address
and that was in January, 2003. They wanted to create the
Terrorist Threat Integration Center.
It seems like--it's been 2 years since the President issued
that mandate--that we still have considerable problems with the
redundancy and duplication, and the resistance to, again, to
working together across agency lines, between the National
Counterterrorism Center and the DCI Counterterrorism Office.
So I was wondering, what do you think needs to be done to
clarify and define the missions of these respective offices so
that we can avoid this duplication as well?
I mean, the President of the United States can issue a
mandate and issue a directive, and 2 years later we're still
fighting the same old turf battles. How do you think that we
need to define these authorities to make sure that this doesn't
continue?
General Hayden. Yes, ma'am. First of all, I take the point
about the NCTC and what's been done there, and I think you know
John Brennan has been very aggressive in establishing the
center, not without, as you suggest, some issues.
Senator Snowe. Well, in fact, he had most recently asked--
he had some detailees assigned to the center, and not without
difficulty.
General Hayden. Right. But John, I think, has the right
sight picture as you've described. I know of the President
giving the overall direction, as he should.
What perhaps may be lacking is a specificity. The President
saying, ``Eliminate duplication.'' I'm sorry to even footnote
my own speech here. One needs to be careful. One wants to build
a little duplication into some areas, like analysis, so you're
not just going to one source and so you have competition. But
overall, you're right. We need to rationalize what the entire
community is doing.
The Department of Defense has something called the Unified
Command Plan. They look at it about every 2 years. It's signed
by the President. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the
U.S.-European Command has these responsibilities or that U.S.
Transportation Command has these responsibilities.
We have no similar document within the intelligence
community. It's an idea that we have discussed very informally,
very briefly in the last 2 weeks since the Ambassador's been
back.
Something like that, an approach like that, where someone
who has authority for the entire community actually says,
you're going to do this and you're going to do that. We've not
done it that clearly before. If we're going to get the
increased efficiencies you're suggesting we need, something
like that's going to have to be done.
Now with the DNI--the DCI could have done that. But keep in
mind, the DCI's sole job was not running the community. Let me
suggest to you that even if he had made a decision that was
infinitely wise, the fact that he was also the head of CIA
would have presented that decision in a different light to the
entire community. The DNI doesn't carry that burden.
Senator Snowe. Thank you very much, General Hayden, again,
and thank you for your willingness to step forward. I think you
and Ambassador Negroponte are going to make a great team in
leading this new position and agency. Thank you.
General Hayden. Thank you, ma'am.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Chambliss.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SAXBY CHAMBLISS
Senator Chambliss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I
am pleased that the President has seen fit to follow the
recommendation by a sense of the Senate that we adopted last
year during our intelligence reform bill that one of the two
top positions in the new agency be a military officer.
I also would commend the President on his choice of General
Mike Hayden to be the Deputy to the DNI. I think, without
question, General Hayden brings exactly the type of operational
background and experience to the job, the right kind of
leadership.
As I told him the other day when he visited with me, in my
position on the House Intelligence Committee, following
September 11, General Hayden contacted me relative to the
improvement of the capabilities of his office and his agency,
without having to contact him. That showed the right kind of
leadership that we need in this very critical time in the
history of our country.
So I'm excited by General Hayden's nomination to this
position. I look forward to supporting him.
General Hayden. Thank you, sir.
Senator Chambliss. General, as you know, Senator Ben Nelson
and I have introduced legislation to create a four-star
combatant commander which will be titled INTCOM. This
legislation brings together, for the first time, the DNI and
military intelligence components from the four services, as
designated by the Secretary of Defense.
The three national agencies in DOD, the NSA, NGA and NRO,
remain directly under the Secretary of Defense, but authorizes
the Secretary to direct communications between his office and
these agencies to be transmitted through the INTCOM commander.
Also, there is no prohibition for the DNI to coordinate
directly with the national agencies as required.
Do you see a benefit in creating a unified intelligence
command to harmonize the intelligence activities being
conducted by the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and DIA?
If so, can you please share with this Committee some of the
major benefits that you see from that?
General Hayden. Yes, sir. I have talked to some members of
your staff on several occasions and I've read the draft
legislation.
Let me caveat my remarks by saying we're still kind of
shaking out what the DNI structure is going to look like, so
it's really difficult to now put this new structure into our
sight and see how it might relate. So anything I would say
right now would be, of necessity, preliminary.
I'd offer a couple of views. One is, everyone talks about
the American intelligence community being comprised of 15
different agencies. In fact, in my testimony to the House last
August, I said I wish people would stop saying that. It sounds
like we have too many men on the field and we should be
permanently penalized or something.
Different aspects of that community need to have different
relationships to the leadership of that community. I would
offer, for example, that the intelligence activities of the
military departments--Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines--should
be very focused on the Department of Defense and the needs of
DOD and the DOD leadership.
At the other end of the spectrum, you've got what I
described in my remarks as those big, muscular collection
agencies--NSA, NGA, NRO, for example. Although they're in the
Department of Defense, they're the fighting force for the DNI,
and his relationship to them has to be direct in terms of what
it is he can do with them, be it budget or operations or
anything in between.
My personal sense--and you and I have talked about this
briefly--is that to the degree that Defense can package up the
tactical intelligence activities of the military departments
and present them in a unified, integrated, coherent way to the
DNI, that would be a real virtue and something that would be
very welcome.
Senator Chambliss. Well, thank you, General. We look
forward to continuing to dialog with you on that. I look
forward to your confirmation and your leadership in putting
this new agency together in the way that it needs to be
coordinated.
General Hayden. Thank you, sir.
Senator Chambliss. Thank you.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Rockefeller.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Hayden, during the evolution of the reform bill
last year, I proposed the creation of an intelligence
community-wide ombudsman for politicization, similar to the
current position at CIA. The final legislation was watered
down, in fact, so it sort of said that it directed the DNI to
assign an individual responsibility of performing the function,
but it didn't necessarily say that that would be full-time. He
might be doing five or six--or she doing five or six--other
things.
I felt very strongly about this after the Committee's Iraq
review. I feel even more strongly about this, as Carl Levin
hinted, with respect to certain nomination hearings that are
going on at the present time.
Do you think it makes sense to establish an ombudsman
within the Office of the DNI to counsel analysts and initiate
inquiries into real or perceived problems of analytical
tradecraft or politicization, biased reporting, or lack of
objectivity in the intelligence analysis, No. 1?
No. 2, how would you react if a senior policymaker--this
always gets into this question of the creation of intelligence
and then the use of intelligence--if a senior policymaker
sought to take retribution? Now that could be in a variety of
forms. It could be a visit, which didn't imply retribution. It
could be a follow-up visit if that analyst or particular
employee had not analyzed or produced in the way which was
consistent with the policymaker's point of view.
Again, I ask these questions because we're looking at the
next 30, 40 years. I think this war on terror is going to go on
a very long time, and the processes and the cachement areas
that we put in place now will be effective for a long time.
So if a senior policymaker sought retribution or to
directly influence against an intelligence analyst whose
assessment didn't, obviously, agree with that policymaker's
point of view, how would you handle that?
General Hayden. Yes, sir. I know Ambassador Negroponte was
very clear. I think the phrase he used on Tuesday was to call
them as he saw them. I think you've already gotten, the
Committee's gotten, a personal commitment from the Ambassador
that certainly, I think the term is telling truth to power--the
emphasis on truth, and he would do that.
I have that experience in my dialog with him.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Truth to power referred more to
leveling with the President. This is, I think at a somewhat
lower level, yes.
General Hayden. The law does provide for an ombudsman. We
have included that in our organizational discussions. It is
something that we're aware of, we intend to do, we intend to
put into the analytical effort. It's one of the three or four
pieces that we've kind of cobbled that must be part of
analysis. So we would do that.
You have a personal commitment from the Ambassador. You're
getting one from me right now. I know what my responsibility
is. It is that I know what the truth is, that I speak the
truth, and that, at an absolute minimum, anyone in the
decisionmaking role--be it a military commander or a
policymaker--knows what my understanding of the truth is.
I experienced this. You made a reference in your question
to what would I do. I don't have to make that up. I have
experienced that.
The J-2 for U.S. forces in Europe--if you recall, in the
early 90s, we had an operation called Deny Flight, where we
were trying to keep all the aircraft in Bosnia on the ground,
essentially to prevent the Serbs from flying, since they were
the only ones who had an air force.
Intelligence would look at all the sources of information
for a day, and the U.S. military forces would have AWACS and
fighters and fighter caps flying and so on. On an occasional
day, we would have a body of evidence that said, you know,
we've got a little SIGINT here, a little imagery here, a ground
observer there. Those dots out there suggest they could be
connected in a way that somebody may have scooted one of those
Maya trainers at Banj Aluka and conducted a strafing run over
at Bihach.
I quickly learned, when we began to brief that, the
phenomenon that I later identified as the phenomenon of the
unpleasant fact. When you brief, the unpleasant fact seems to
have a higher standard of proof than the pleasant fact. This is
entirely within a military chain of command. We kept reporting
the truth as we knew it to be, not without some stress.
I can recall one of my brightest junior officers who
finally said he had finally discovered what Deny Flight meant:
The Serbs fly, and we deny it. So this happens a lot. It's part
of the burden of being an analyst.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. It's part of the burden of being
an analyst, but, if not unlawful, it comes perilously close
to--a policymaker to walk across that Grand Canyon slender
bridge, enter the world of intelligence making to insert
himself or herself into a process.
General Hayden. Yes, sir. Right, but even the WMD
Commission, who's come back with a lot of recommendations about
the intelligence community, things we could do better, talks
about the need for this dialog between those who make policy
and those who create intelligence. Although it may be
susceptible to abuse, the only way to get from here to there is
to have that dialogue.
I think the responsibility of an intelligence senior, in my
case the J-2 at U.S. European Command, now as the Principal
Deputy DNI, is when that dialog gets out of bounds, if it ever
were to get out of bounds, you need to throw your body across
the rails, you need to stop that.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. That's good.
So you would then have, at least as of this point, the
concept of a full-time person working on that problem?
General Hayden. Yes, sir. We have talked about the
function. I don't want to over-promise, Senator. We have talked
about the function, the importance of that function. We
understand that. I don't know that we've made any final
decision.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. OK. I'll be watching.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Roberts. I was going to ask a question about the
milestone decision authority. I think that's been covered.
One of the things that I noted in your comments, you noted
the passion by which the intelligence reform bill was
considered, and it was because, obviously, people have very
strong opinions when it comes to national security and the
sense of obligation and responsibility within their own
committees. You do get passionate debate.
One of the things that we kept hearing--or that I kept
hearing--was that basically it was pointed out to us--you don't
have to point it out to the Vice Chairman and myself--that in
the intelligence community, 80 percent of the funds are used
for the military and that obviously nobody in the Congress
would ever want to hinder in any way the lash-up that we need
and want and hopefully are improving, and I think we are,
between our intelligence community and the warfighter, and that
that certainly was not an issue.
The comments kept coming to me when I was talking to
various folks in the other body that while we are very much
aware that the military is the majority user of intelligence,
that the principal user of intelligence is the President of the
United States and the National Security Council and, as a
matter of fact, the Congress of the United States. I wondered
if you would accept that as a fait accompli statement.
In conjunction with that, obviously, that either the
President, National Security Council or Members of Congress
would do nothing but support in regard to intelligence to the
warfighter, but that there is a difference between the majority
user and the principal user of intelligence.
Would you care to comment?
General Hayden. Yes, sir, Senator.
Unless we have serious missteps--and I mean really serious
missteps--I see nothing in the legislation--and I mean missteps
in implementation--I see nothing in the legislation that
condemns us to reducing our ability or willingness to support
American combat forces.
I can't go into detail in open session. I know this is a
fairly impassioned issue. But I would lay the record of the
National Security Agency out for anyone who would care to look
at it and to see what it is we've done in the past 3 years for
intimate, immediate, direct support for American combat forces.
If the office of the DNI can raise the water level of the
entire American intelligence community, it just simply improves
the ability of that community to provide the specific support
that our forces need.
Chairman Roberts. One other question in reference to the
press article that was referred to by Senator Levin. Tell me if
you agree with the following comments--that it is not unusual
to request this type of information, that it has happened
before, not only this administration, but in previous
administrations; such requests are not in and of themselves
inappropriate; and there are, most importantly, Attorney
General-approved processes in place to deal with such requests.
Is that true? Is that correct?
General Hayden. All true. Let me add one additional
thought, Senator. Again, I think Senator Wyden talked about
authorities and privacy.
On balance, we're springloaded to minimize the U.S. person
information in the report. We are allowed, for example, to
actually put it in the original report if it is our judgment
that that information is essential to understanding the
intelligence value of that report. I think that's an exact
quote from the intelligence directive.
On balance we're very cautious, we're very conservative
about that. On balance we're probably under-shooting in terms
of putting the U.S. identity in at the beginning. That then
prompts the request for the U.S. identity.
It is routine, Senator.
Chairman Roberts. Well, I'm a little late in doing this,
but I have here before me--and I apologize to Senator Levin for
reading this without him being here, but I'll share it with him
as soon as possible:
``The procedure for requesting a U.S. person identity when
NSA publishes a SIGINT product that references a U.S. person
references a generic one, i.e., `U.S. person.' A person who
receives an NSA product and who requires the specific identity
for the performance of his official responsibilities may ask
for the specific identity.
An office in the Signals Intelligence Organization at NSA is
responsible for tracking and responding to such requests. If
that office determines that the person making the request needs
the information for the performance of his official
responsibilities and if the information is necessary to
understand the foreign intelligence or assess its importance,
he will authorize the release of the information. The specific
identities will be made available only to those individuals
submitting specific requests for these identities.''
Am I correct?
General Hayden. All true.
Chairman Roberts. That's it. OK.
Thank you very much for coming. Thank you for the job you
have done. And thank you for the job that you will do.
General Hayden. Thank you, Senator.
Chairman Roberts. The Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the Committee adjourned.]