Panel I of a Hearing of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security - Towards a Paradigm for Homeland Security Information Sharing

Federal News Service August 17, 2004 Tuesday

HEADLINE: PANEL I OF A HEARING OF THE HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY SUBJECT: TOWARDS A PARADIGM FOR HOMELAND SECURITY INFORMATION SHARING

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE CHRISTOPHER COX (R-CA)

WITNESSES: THOMAS KEAN, CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION; LEE HAMILTON, VICE CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION

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REP. COX: I thank the gentle lady-does the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Thompson, have an opening statement?

REP. THOMPSON: Mr. Chairman, in the interests of getting to the substance of why we're here, I'll reserve the time allotted to me.

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REP. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me welcome the two gentlemen here this morning.

Let me join my colleague, Ms. Dunn, in saying that the notion that we have all these jurisdictional issues before us is a real problem, and it's a bipartisan problem. Mr. Hamilton, you're absolutely correct, this institution loves power, individuals love power, and the homeland security issue is really one that should not be about power, but one about the people and how we can secure the homeland. So, I will join you and other colleagues who have testified before this committee that we ought to have a standing committee with all the jurisdictional authorities right within the committee. So, I appreciate your comments on that respect.

But, there are some other issues associated with your report. One has to do with transportation. Many individuals in the public would like for people to try to prioritize the transportation problems. Did you all look at transportation and try to give it a pecking order in terms of security or what did you do?

MR. KEAN: I don't think we gave it a pecking order, but what we did is identify the various problems that we thought had to be addressed in the transportation and security areas, and we're spending most of the money now on air safety, but we recognize that the transportation of containers, transportation of people via rail or subway, there are a number of other areas we've got to give, if not equal attention to, at least more attention to than we're giving them right now.

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Thompson, I think we looked quite a bit at the transportation sector, and there are so many possible recommendations that you could make there, we did not try to do that. But what we did say is that you have to plan. What we've been doing is planning on planning for the last three years. We've got to put into place plans, and it has to be done urgently. A comprehensive plan for the entire transportation system that Tom mentioned, aviation, rail, all of that stuff, and likewise sector plans, so that you have some way of measuring what you have done, you know what your goals are, you establish your priorities, you do your budgeting, and all the things that are necessary in good planning. We're not there yet.

We heard yesterday from the Assistant Secretary Asa Hutchinson, they're moving forward on this, and some of these plans, I think, will be ready by the end of the year, but we think it's terribly important to have integrated security plans for all of these modes of transportation. And the other things we mentioned were with regard to aviation security was to make sure you have layers of security, not just one checkpoint.

What happened with the 9/11 terrorists was, there was no layered security. They had to get by one principal problem, and that was the check-in. And, incidentally, a number of them were screened twice, but we didn't stop them. But I think everybody acknowledges that in order to really have an effective security system, you have to have layers of checks. And so we emphasize that. We put a lot of emphasis on explosives, because we think that's a very major problem in transportation security today, and recommended, among other things, for example, that every airplane have an explosive proof container on it, and very few airplanes have that today.

So, those were some of the comments we made with regard to aviation security and rail security. But we didn't try to deal with it comprehensively, we just picked out two or three things that we thought were especially important.

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