Panel I of a Hearing of the House Financial Services Committee - Terrorist Financing, Money Laundering and the 9/11 Commission Report

Federal News Service August 23, 2004 Monday

HEADLINE: PANEL I OF A HEARING OF THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: TERRORIST FINANCING, MONEY LAUNDERING AND THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL OXLEY (R-OH)

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

LOCATION: 2128 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

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REP. GREGORY MEEKS (D-NY): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you, Mr. Hamilton. I want to join the chorus of individuals who have lauded you and Chairman Kean for what you've done. You've really kind of restored some hope to the American public that we can sometimes put politics aside or party aside in coming together to really help the American people. You know, it's kind of the same feeling that we had initially after 9/11 where at that time we felt we were coming together; we were together as a Congress. What you've done on the commission is continued on a long basis showing that you can come together, and I think that you and the commission have led an example that we need to follow also here in Congress.

That being said, I want to also thank the families of the victims of 9/11, because if it wasn't for them and them sticking to it and insisting that this commission be formed, you may not be before us today. And so I want to say a thank you, a special thank you. I think the American people owe a great debt of gratitude to the families. They've lost so much, yet they still have stood up so long so that you're still sitting here and we're now addressing some of the issues that we probably should have been addressing all along, and it would not have happened without them. And the American people owe them a great deal of-debt of gratitude.

Let me ask this question. And you know, oftentimes when we talk, I talk about diversity. And the reason why we talk about diversity and various issues is because you get different ideas and different opinions from different people, whether an individual happens to be of different ethnic backgrounds, et cetera.

Did the commission at all look at our intelligence agencies and even some of our diplomatic corps, et cetera, in the avenue of diversity-whether or not-because of ideas-we had enough Arab Americans and Muslims and others that were involved in it and helping us to come up to determine or predict even an outcome of what, you know-where terrorists may be headed; and then further, and specifically, in looking at the whole-keep it in context of the Financial Services-the whole sharia-compliant system that Muslims generally work with when they're talking about banking. You know, we talk about hiding-to make sure that we understand their own-their whole financial system so that we can be helpful in that regard in trying to figure out the best way to stop this kind of money laundering, et cetera, to finance terrorists-terrorism.

MR. HAMILTON: Thank you for your comments about the families. That's exactly on the mark. They have been enormously important to us and helpful to us in the course of our investigation. They gave us at one point about 150 questions, I think. We tried to answer all of them. We couldn't answer all. We did the best we could. But they've been exceedingly supportive, and many of them are very, very knowledgeable about these public policy issues. So we've been pleased to have their support, and they are marvelous people individually, and we have come to know many of them quite well.

The second point, on diversity, I'm pleased you raised it. We put very great emphasis on the necessity of the intelligence community becoming more diverse. It is an absolute necessity. There is tremendous emphasis today on human intelligence. You cannot possibly penetrate an al Qaeda cell with a guy like me. It can't be done. I don't care how fluent an Arab speaker I would be-and I'm not; you can't penetrate it. These are very small cells. They're often tied by family relationships. They're a very closely knit group. And penetrating those groups is the toughest intelligence target that we have. It cannot be done by a gentleman from Indiana who went to Indiana schools and all the rest; it has to be done with someone of that culture.

So creating that diversity now becomes a national security priority. We hear all the time about the languages that need to be spoken. And incidentally, you're talking about 20 or more of them. Many languages that we have to master. And beyond mastery of the language is mastery of the culture itself. You mentioned that you have to understand the culture better than we do; not just the financial culture, but many other aspects of their culture.

People have to begin to see this as an important part of our intelligence community. And if the CIA or other intelligence communities want to do a more effective job in human intelligence or if they want to do a more effective job just in providing accurate information to the policymakers, they're going to have to become more diverse.

And they're going have to hire people with great linguistic skills. And I mean when we're talking about linguistic skills, we're not just speaking about somebody who speaks the language. They have to speak it like a native speaker if you're going to penetrate these groups.

REP. OXLEY: The gentleman's time has expired.

MR. HAMILTON: So it's very important.

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