Panel II of a Hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee - Assessing Counterterrorism Capabilites

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE PANEL II

SUBJECT: ASSESSING AMERICA'S COUNTERTERRORISM CAPABILITIES; RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME)

PANEL II WITNESSES: PHILIP ZELIKOW, 9/11 COMMISSION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR; CHRIS KOJM, 9/11 COMMISSION DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:
SEN. COLLINS: (Gavel.) The committee will be in order.

We will now hear from two individuals who, as the lead staff members of the 9/11 commission, have devoted the last year and a half to understanding the events that led up to the September 11th attacks and our nation's antiterrorism preparedness and response.

Philip Zelikow is the executive director of the commission. He also is director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and is a professor of history at the University of Virginia.

Christopher Kojm is the deputy executive director of the 9/11 commission. He is a former deputy assistant secretary for Intelligence Policy at the State Department and served as a senior staff member on foreign policy for Representative Lee Hamilton, the vice chair of the commission.

We welcome you here today. We very much appreciate the extraordinary public service that you have rendered over the past year and a half, and we look forward to your statement.

Mr. Zelikow, we'll start with you.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you for your testimony.

All of us have scheduling pressures this afternoon, but Senator Specter does have a plane that he's trying to catch. So I'm going to allow him to do the first round of questions.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Senator Lieberman.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Why don't you go ahead?

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

I want to follow up on the testimony that we heard earlier today from the director of TTIC in response to questions that Senator Levin raised and also in my private conversations with Director Brennan. It is evident that he has had difficulties in getting the resources, particularly the trained experts that he needs to staff the center.

What would make the scenario any different when it comes to a national counterterrorism center? I think the idea of a fusion center staffed with our very best experts is the way to go. But I know from visiting TTIC that many of the analysts, while very hardworking and bright, are extremely young and inexperienced. What would be different about the center that would allow it to avoid those same problems?

MR. ZELIKOW: Thank you, Senator. I listened to that panel, too, of very impressive officials, outstanding officials, and they all described that personnel problem. And it was like four doctors all saying the patient has a terrible fever, but then he says, "Yes, and what's causing that fever?" I mean, why is it that they're having these personnel problems?

I mean, it's the fundamental issue of supply and demand. His demand is outstripping supply. Why is demand outstripping supply? It's because all the vertically integrated bureaucracies have to take first claim on their own, they are creating redundant capabilities, and the joint entity has no capacity to attract or compel the attendance of the best and the brightest.

Under the proposal we suggest, backed by the authority of the proposed national intelligence director and the president, the NCTC should be much more likely to recruit outstanding analysts, including experts in using single-source information, like those at the NSA.

What TTIC now does is it makes due with the analysts other agencies can spare. I think there was actually a rather acute question on that point that called attention to the disparity between TTIC's manpower goals and what it's been able to attain, because first the agencies satisfy their own pressing demands, including their own fusion centers.

You can make those joint assignments more attractive to the personnel if you have joint personnel policies set across the intelligence community that encourage and facilitate joint assignments. Personnel standards that we propose also should be set by the national intelligence director.

SEN. COLLINS: One of the major differences between the proposed center and TTIC is the counterterrorism center would have a role in operational planning. Your recommendation in that regard is different from the conclusion reached by the Gilmore commission back in 2002. That commission also called for the creation of a national counterterrorism center, but did not give the center-or propose that the center have an operational role. That's going to be a major issue for this committee to decide. Would you elaborate more on the commission's belief that the center should have an operational role?

MR. ZELIKOW: Yes, ma'am. Two things informed us that were unavailable to the Gilmore commission.

First, we studied the 9/11 story, and problems in transnational operational management, as we elaborate in Chapter 11 and other places, are just central to that story.

Second, we spent a lot of time trying to understand how the system is working today. And the problems of joint planning and joint operational management are actually-they're not terribly visible to Congress because they're very much inside the executive branch, but they are absolutely central. If you were to go, as we did-and we went at a particularly bad time-to Pakistan and Afghanistan and look at how they're working to hunt for bin Laden across agencies on both sides of that border with differential legal authorities, and look at: Well, where is the joint strategic plan for the hunt for bin Laden? Where is the person who is in charge every day of the integrated strategic plan, that updates that plan every day of how we're hunting bin Laden? There is no such joint integrated plan. There isn't a joint integrated planner for that hunt. There is, instead, a number of disparate agencies with different legal authorities all doing their thing, and then meeting every day, and a series of meetings in many places, trying to make it all converge.

SEN. COLLINS: I support most of the commission's recommendations, although I may differ on the details. But one that causes me considerable concern is the recommendation that paramilitary operations be transferred from the CIA to the Pentagon. Over and over, when I talk to intelligence experts, they question the wisdom of that transfer, and point out that the CIA has an agility that the Pentagon lacks.

Why did you reach the conclusion that that responsibility should be transferred to the Department of Defense?

MR. ZELIKOW: Senator, we concluded that the country cannot afford building basically two Fort Braggs-one in North Carolina and one out of Camp Perry-and that we need to have two capabilities to both operate and train people to operate crew-served weapons, small- unit assault tactics, and so on.

We saw in the 9/11 story where the CIA-and it's in the report-where the CIA took the lead in designing a major small-unit assault operation, a capture operation, in 1998. And because the CIA did it, it was regarded as an amateur operation and was not seen as credible by national policymakers. It went by the Joint Staff and they said, well, looks pretty good, but we take no ownership of it. Had the special operations commander at the time, General Mulkanavan (ph), come in and said, "This is my plan and I think it works," we think that whole capture operation story is a different story.

I'll add that there are a number of issues which we can't get into in open session, having to do with legal authorities and operations in the field, that are complications.

And I think it's-frankly, the culture issues you see is basically the elephant versus the gazelle stereotype. And the problem is, those culture issues partly arose precisely because of these organizational stovepipes. I think if you-and instead we'd say, well, we have to keep those organizational stovepipes because these people have evolved into elephants and gazelles, that's just not, we think, the right management approach. I think a better approach would be to try to address the culture issues by getting CIA and DOD cooperating on the ground, training, exercises and joint planning so that special ops is challenged to develop that kind of agile culture working with CIA, and I think they'll meet that challenge.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Senator Lieberman.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Senator Coleman.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Senator Akaka.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Senator Dayton.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Senator Levin.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today and for the extraordinary work that they have done on this report. We very much appreciate your assistance and we look forward to working closely with you as we proceed with the remainder of the committee's work.

The hearing record will remain open for five days. We hope you will be willing to respond to additional questions from the committee members. Again, thank you very much for your service.

And this hearing is now adjourned.