Hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence- Strategic Planning of Intelligence Functions and the Pace of Intelligence Reform at the FBI
Interview
Hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence- Strategic Planning of Intelligence Functions and the Pace of Intelligence Reform at the FBI
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SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, you indicated that you were not here when Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton were testifying. Did you listen and watched what they were saying?
MR. HULON: We heard some of it. I heard some of it on the television.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Okay. 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.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Okay.
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 looking -- 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? What is the -- 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 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 and 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 that 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 what you have to look at also is you 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.
SEN. 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.
But the -- 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 are 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 are appropriate.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to have a second round if I may, if that's convenient, after everybody else is done.
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Senator Wyden --
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: After everybody else is done.
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: -- would you yield?
Please proceed.
SEN. 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 Sheikh Mohammed and 14 other accused al Qaeda 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.
SEN. 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.
SEN. 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 at a different --
MR. HULON: Yes, sir. We shouldn't talk about any of that in this setting.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Lastly, 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.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to put the article into the record, if I may have unanimous consent to do that.
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