Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee - The 9/11 Commission and Recommendations for the Future of Federal Law Enforcement and Border Security

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE SUBJECT: THE 9/11 COMMISSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AND BORDER SECURITY

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR ORRIN G. HATCH (R-UT)

WITNESSES PANEL I:

LEE HAMILTON, VICE CHAIR, 9/11 COMMISSION;

SLADE GORTON, COMMISSIONER, 9/11 COMMISSION;

PANEL II: ASA HUTCHINSON, UNDER SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; MAUREEN BAGINSKI, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENCE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

LOCATION: 226 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:
SEN. CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank you for having this hearing in a timely way. Hi. I want to thank you for having this hearing in a timely way and thank all of our panelists for the good work they do. I've worked with Asa Hutchinson and Maureen Baginski in their respective roles, and they're both responsive and involved, and really caring about tightening up security in our nation. And I can't say enough good about the 9/11 Commission. I think it was just an incredible tour de force in terms of the recommendations, in terms of the bipartisanship, in terms of the refusal to point fingers of blame, which makes the media all happy but doesn't really solve the problems here but instead looks for the future. And so I compliment you all on that.

I'm worried to be-I was to address this to our two commissioners. I know it's been touched on, but I'm worried that a lot of your recommendations are either not going to happen, or more likely what usually happens in Washington, we look like we're doing something but we don't do them. The director of national intelligence is a classic.

The president came out early for it but didn't give it the teeth. Didn't say he was for the budgetary and the hiring authority, which you had mentioned, Slade, was supposed to be in the original CIA and somehow got lost over the years.

And then two days ago we heard Secretary Rumsfeld and he's representing the Defense Department and obviously the interests of the Defense Department come out. And basically, I mean, we all have been around Washington long enough to know he was throwing cold water on your proposal, even if he didn't say it directly. So I have a few questions on that. First, are you going to take strong and direct action to try and make sure we enact a full DNI, director of national intelligence, with budgetary and hiring authority before Congress adjourns this year, including however you see fit to do it, making sure that the president supports those proposals or is told that he ought to.

Slade.

SLADE GORTON: Well, that's exactly what we've done. You know, we've made our recommendations, we have said that our recommendations are integral, that they fit into one another, and that we can't say that doing them partway or piecemeal is going to provide the necessary degree of public security for the people of the United States, that it's out conclusion that they deserve and can have.

I think that all of us are probably more optimistic maybe than some of your question on this. We don't see, at least so far in any of the comments, some kind of veto coming from the administration, and we see that the legislation is going to be written here. Just two days ago, as I understand it, Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller submitted the draft to the Government Affairs Committee that are essentially what we've recommended. That's the legislation that we recommend be passed.

SEN. SCHUMER: Right. Do you worry that the House may not get-you may not get a vote on it in the House?

MR. GORTON: I think that --

SEN. SCHUMER: The Senate you'll get a vote on it one way or another.

MR. GORTON: I think we will. I've already attended one House hearing in Los Angeles on the subject and have another tomorrow. I think members of the House are equally interested in doing something.

SEN. SCHUMER: Let me ask you this, because when Porter Goss was nominated, it was early on, I think. I was the first Democrat to say good things about him. I think he's a good man. I served with him in the House and I think he has integrity. My worry is that will be a substitute for doing the recommendations that you suggested on the director of national intelligence. That we'll do Goss and then we'll say, let's come back, let's let him have an assessment. He has not been that friendly to your recommendations. What would you think of trying to tie the two together? I think this is much more an issue of an issue of structure than of one individual person. But of us-and we could probably do this here in the Senate, saying, yeah, let's approve Porter Goss and let's approve the 9/11 Commission's recommendations on DNI at the same time.

MR. GORTON: That's beyond our pay grade, sir.

SEN. SCHUMER: Oh, no, it's not. Well, I would simply say to you that I am more worried maybe than you are. I was delighted to hear Pat Roberts come out and say what he did. But I think we have a long way to go. And, frankly, that doesn't absolve this body. I think we have the same problems here, maybe even more so, in terms of creating a committee that has oversight overall intelligence, with budgetary and other kinds of authority which we don't have now. And no one's happy with the oversight that the intelligence committee is able to do because of their lack of power. I would just hope that you'll be real strong on this, saying it and then letting it-because if we don't do it by November, I'm very worried we may never do it and the fine work that you've done may be put on the bookshelf. Do you have any comments on this, Lee?

MR. HAMILTON: Well, we feel very positive about our recommendations. We think if they're adopted the country will be safer. We think it's terribly important that the national intelligence director have full authority of budget information systems, personnel, and we go so far as to say that if he doesn't have those powers, don't body with it. No sense creating it, because then you really are creating another layer of bureaucracy. And, you know, we've been talking for 30 or 40 years around here about strengthening the power of the CIA director, and we've done a little thing-you and I in the past have done some things that I think have been helpful. But he still is in a very anomalous position.

SEN. SCHUMER: Will you-will both of you and the committee members have a running sort of-you'll be commenting as we move through the process about this and that and the other, not just saying these are our recommendations, we hope you'll do them, and then exiting the stage?

MR. GORTON: We don't have any intention of exiting.

SEN. SCHUMER: Great. That's good news.

SEN. HATCH: We haven't seen you exiting at all. (Laughter.) We think you're hanging in there.

SEN. SCHUMER: Do I have time for another? I don't --

SEN. HATCH: Have one more question.

SEN. SCHUMER: Right, okay.

My next question relates to the issue of nuclear security. One of my great worries, and I think many of us share this, but particularly I've been focused on this, is that somebody slip a nuclear weapon into our country and, God forbid, explode it. I don't mean a dirty bomb, I mean a real nuclear weapon. And there are a lot of different ways to focus on this. One, of course, is to try and buy them all up overseas. That is an important job. We should do everything we can. It's next to an impossible job. It seems to me the better way to do this is to be at the choke point. That is the place where a nuclear weapon would be smuggled into this country.

And I've been trying to push this Congress for years and the administration now for two years, coming from the city from which I come, to do more on this. We had originally proposed-technologically it's feasible to develop detectors that you could put on every crane that loaded a container bound for the United States, on every toll booth of a truck that entered our borders-and those are really the only two ways you can bring a nuclear weapon here into this country-that could detect an amount of radiation in a real bomb.

I've been pushing to have money for this. We finally got-we had proposed $150 million, which is what the scientists told us they needed the first year. We got $35 million through the Appropriations Committee, and even that, as best I can tell, has not been spent. So here my question goes to all of the panelists, or particularly our two commission members and Asa Hutchinson from Homeland Security. Shouldn't we be doing more on this? Are we doing enough on this? Why-and to Asa in particular, why aren't we speaking at least a paltry $35 million that has been allocated to develop these devices? Is it good enough to inspect only 4 percent of the containers, for instance, that come through our ports for nuclear devices?

MR. HUTCHINSON: Thank you, Senator Schumer. And, first of all, we agree completely with the underlying point that we have to do all we can to detect nuclear devices, weapons, material that might be coming into the United States. We have a goal of 100 percent radiological screen if cargo and conveyances come into the country. We have deployed 151 imaging systems, detection systems. We have 10,000 personal radiation monitors that have been deployed, 284 radiation portal monitors. In reference to the dollar amount, the president's budget for '05 asks for $50 million, which is an increase from what was previously designated. And so we share the commitment, we believe it's important, and we're working very hard to make sure that that-those items are procured and deployed --

SEN. SCHUMER: I'm glad it's $15 million more. Every expert will tell you that over the three-year period-because I've talked to all of them and none of them are terribly political. These are scientists. And the idea is to develop something that moves from a Geiger counter to sort of a fool proof detection device that can detect things many more feet away. A Geiger counter works great at three feet, it doesn't work at 80 feet. And 50 million isn't close to enough.

And this is-we face so many dangers, and it's not an easy job, looking at the range of the questions, every one of them legitimate, that's been asked here. But this is so serious in terms of its devastation, and it's not-it's hardly the most expensive even to implement and everything else, why only 50 million? Why aren't we doing more? And again, this is not just an al Qaeda problem, this is our problem for the next generation.

MR. HUTCHINSON: That's correct. And, for example, whenever we looked at New York and concerns in that arena, you know, we make sure that we have our assets flexible enough to deploy where they're needed to be. Procurement is an issue whenever it's allocated, in terms of the schedule of manufacturing and the procurement of that, but we're moving very quickly on that and we are enhancing our capacity --

SEN. SCHUMER: Why hasn't the $35 million been spent that was allocated, not in this year's budget but in last year's?

MR. HUTCHINSON: I would have to get back with you on that, Customs and Border Protection is spending that money as quickly as they can in terms of procuring these assets. I mentioned 151 that's been deployed, 284 radiation monitors, so there's a schedule that's being met day in and day out for the deployment of these radiation monitors.

SEN. SCHUMER: But we still only do 4 percent of the containers and a certain percentage, I don't recall, of the toll booths. I mean, I've seem them work, I've seen the ones that are there, they're just not close to enough.

SEN. HATCH: Senator, your time is up.

SEN. SCHUMER: Yeah, could I just ask our commissioners to --

MR. HUTCHINSON: Well, Senator Schumer, I want you to take a look at our proposal on the National Intelligence Centers. All the attention has been on the National Counterterrorism Center, but we recommend-it's the other side of the chart here. All the attention's been over here, but the other side of it is that we would-the administration would identify the major threats to the national security of the United States, counterterrorism would be a part of it, but also the weapons of mass destruction.

And you would put in one place then the authority to bring together all of the intelligence that we have from all of these various intelligence agencies. But more than intelligence you would do operational planning there. And that follows the military example where you pool J2 and J3 together. And so you would put in one place in government the responsibility to plan operations to deal with weapons of mass destruction.

You would have all of the intelligence the government has. We support the expansion of the Proliferation Security Initiative of the president, we support more funding for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. This is the ultimate nightmare, that the terrorists get hands on weapons of mass destruction. We know that they've tried for two years to do so, and it's a terribly important problem.

But take a look at the potential of the National Intelligence Centers as the way to deal with this problem.

SEN. SCHUMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SEN. SCHUMER: I have a whole lot of-Mr. Chairman, I have a whole lot of questions but mindful of people's schedules, I'll do them in writing.

I'm going to ask Mr. Hutchinson in writing, just from the Homeland, why this $35 million, paltry as it is, hasn't been spent yet, or just to give me some details in writing, he doesn't have to do it now.

My final question relates-it's to both the commission and Ms. Baginski. I'm still concerned about all those Saudi flights that came about right after September 11th. Long before the commission came out I sat with Dick Clarke, you know, he gave me his little synopsis as to what happened, I know you talked to him. But it still doesn't-and your-you know, this is one place, one of the very few places I'm not sure I completely agree with the commission's recommendations.

My question is this, not did every person who was on that flight get a check, they did, they got a-you know, somebody went and cleared them. I'm not sure it was under the best of circumstances. I want to know who authorized the flight. How was it, especially when all planes were grounded, that this plane was able to take off, filled with Saudi nationals, including some people in the bin Laden family.

It couldn't have been Dick Clarke. I don't think he would have that authority. And so did you ask that question on the commission? Did you get any answers? Isn't it a relevant question to be answered? And then Ms. Baginski, if she knows anything.

MR. HAMILTON: Well, we looked into it as thoroughly as we could, Senator Schumer, and I suspect this is one of these questions that will be looked at a great deal more in the future. We found no evidence that any flight of Saudi nationals departed before national airspace was open or reopened. We found no evidence of the involvement of U.S. officials at the political level in any decision making on these flights.

What the testimony was was that Dick Clarke-this is a few days after --

SEN. SCHUMER: I think the 13th, yeah.

MR. HAMILTON: Yeah. Was just besieged with hundreds and hundreds of questions. And the FBI called up Dick Clarke, and there had been a contact from the Saudi embassy to the FBI, the FBI called up Dick Clarke and said, is it okay to let these flights go out? Dick Clarke said, yes, if checks have been made or whatever. In other words, it was not something that took a huge amount of his time.

And we-from what we know, we believe the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of the Saudi nationals before their departure, including extensive interviews with regard to the bin Ladens. And there were a number of them. Our own-now, our own independent check of the databases found no links between terrorism and the Saudis that departed. So that's where we came out on the investigation.

MR. GORTON: And that's after the fact.

MR. HAMILTON: That's after the fact, yes.

MR. GORTON: That's what we did later during the course of our investigation.

MR. HAMILTON: That's after the fact, that's where we are in the investigation --

SEN. SCHUMER: You don't know who authorized this-the early one, the 13th, was one of the very first flights allowed. It wasn't that everybody was flying then again, you had to get specific authorization. Then there were others later, like there was one the 19th, after everybody was flying again.

MR. GORTON: Is that the one from Florida that came up, you're talking about?

SEN. SCHUMER: To Tampa, yeah.

MR. GORTON: Even that early Tampa flight to Lexington was after the Tampa airport was opened to general aviation.

SEN. SCHUMER: Didn't they have to get approval? I thought in those early days there had-in other words, all planes were flying then?

MR. HAMILTON: The commercial airplanes took a little while longer than some of the general aviation to get cranked up to fly.

SEN. SCHUMER: And any general aviation flight was allowed on the 13th?

MR. HAMILTON: They did not take off until the Tampa airport was opened.