Panel I of a Hearing of the House Government Reform Committee - 9/11 Commission Recommendations

Federal News Service August 3, 2004 Tuesday

HEADLINE: PANEL I OF A HEARING OF THE HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS

CHAIRED BY: REP. TOM DAVIS (R-VA)

WITNESSES: JOHN LEHMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER ®; BOB KERREY, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER (D)

BODY:

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. STEPHEN LYNCH (D-MA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, at the outset, I just want to thank you and Mr. Waxman for your promptness in responding to the 9/11 commission report.

Commissioner Lehman and Senator Kerrey, I'd also like to thank you again and extend our gratitude; join the echo, the chorus up here for the great efforts of your commission and yourselves personally on behalf of our country.

Today's hearing offers the first opportunity for the House of Representatives to review the various proposals, both structural and policy-oriented, set forth in the 9/11 commission final report. And I would just like to respectfully urge my colleagues, in weighing these proposals, to abide by the bedrock principles upon which our nation was founded; namely, our government's responsibility and obligation to ensure the basic security of our people, as well as maintaining the delicate system of checks and balances that guarantees our government's accountability to our people, and also, of course, a profound commitment to safeguarding the civil liberties that have come to be inseparable from the American way of life.

To this end, in consideration of the 9/11 commission's recommendations, I think we must dedicate ourselves to devising a national counterterrorism policy that truly promotes information- sharing and cooperation, and above all, accountability, as both of you gentlemen have testified today. And I would agree with others who have noted that the 9/11 commission and yourselves in particular have demonstrated to the Congress what a shining example bipartisanship can accomplish. And that's reflected in your report.

I think all of us here are committed to developing an effective counterterrorism policy, regardless of where those recommendations may come from, whether it's the commission or the Congress or the administration.

And lastly, I would be remiss if I did not say to the families of those loved ones who were lost on September 11th that we thank you for your persistence and your loyalty and your dedication throughout this process. You have contributed greatly to this process. And it is my only hope that the weight of your sorrow will in some way be lightened by knowing that it is shared by both your neighbors and your nation.

My question to the commissioners is simply this. This committee has previously investigated goings-on at the FBI and the Boston office. And we found during that investigation that there was a cultural resistance to information-sharing. We found that intelligence was actually the currency of career advancement for many of those FBI agents and supervisors.

Is there one proposal, is there one formulation in your own minds, that'll break down that resistance to information-sharing that we have seen, at least in the FBI, and I believe is probably prevalent through all of these intelligence agencies?

MR. LEHMAN: This was one of the most long-considered issues that we debated and fought about and took testimony on. It certainly was a contributing factor to 9/11. It's a deep cultural reality that good law enforcement people do not share evidence. It's ingrained in their professionalism. And it's needed in the law enforcement community.

That is what makes it so difficult to blend or to share intelligence-gathering and analysis, on the one hand, and law enforcement on the other. We thought very hard about creating an independent agency, an independent domestic intelligence agency, on the MI-5 or some other similar model like Australia or Canada has.

We ultimately decided not to recommend that but to recommend something that, we think, neatly addresses exactly the problem that you found in Boston, that we found endemic in the domestic intelligence problem in the FBI. We are recommending a semi- autonomous service within FBI that is protected by the NID that has either the executive assistant director for national security and for intelligence, perhaps combined in one strong deputy director of FBI, that is dual-hatted to both the national intelligence director and to the FBI director, so that we retain the strengths of the connections of the FBI with the local law enforcement community, which is the great gatherers of domestic intelligence, and we keep the protections of civil liberties that the Justice Department provides, yet we protect that intelligence function within FBI from exactly the dominance of the law enforcement culture of no sharing and of case development and so forth, rather than the sharing culture of intelligence analysis.

And that is another reason why this is all of a piece. If we proceed with the national intelligence director and do not give him hiring and firing authority over that FBI intelligence deputy and give him or her that authority over the budget and appropriations for the FBI intelligence function, then you have not really made much difference. You have not brought FBI into the fusion of our intelligence.

MR. KERREY: We were very impressed-the commission was very impressed-and I don't think I'm speaking; John can shake his head if I'm wrong-we were very impressed with the progress that Director Mueller has made in a relatively short period of time to change that culture.

Part of the culture is just understandable human nature. I mean, I don't want to tell you something because I'm afraid you're going to screw me with it.

REP. LYNCH: Either that or you won't get credit for it.

MR. KERREY: I won't get credit for it.

REP. LYNCH: That's right.

MR. KERREY: But there's also another one that I just-there are times when secrecy doesn't equal security. There's time when secrecy equals the opposite. It makes us less secure. Ninety percent of the foreign policy stuff that we get today to make decisions, that you get today, you get from open sources. And the more we keep these things secret, the less debate we have.

In my view, the reason we didn't identify bin Laden as public enemy number one prior to 9/11 is we kept the details about who he was secret. After 9/11, the full story's out there. And 70 -- (people?) said, "Well, we didn't know about it." Seventy-percent of what we knew about bin Laden, we knew in 1997. Ninety percent we knew in '99. We knew 100 percent by 2001. We kept it secret. In my view, it made it exceptionally difficult for what we needed to do to reduce that threat.

REP. LYNCH: Thank you.

MR. LEHMAN: One very brief anecdote --

REP. SHAYS: Please be brief.

MR. LEHMAN: Very brief. In the '93 World Trade Center, the Justice Department had to turn over to the defense counsel the names of the co-conspirators that intelligence had gathered. It went straight to bin Laden. But they could not share it with CIA.

REP. SHAYS: Amazing. Very interesting, your responses. At this time the chair would recognize Judge Carter.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT