Hearing of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee

September 20, 2004 Monday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE SELECT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

RE: NOMINATION OF PORTER GOSS TO BE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR PAT ROBERTS (R-KS)

WITNESSES: REP. PORTER GOSS (R-FL)

LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
SEN. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): Well, I get to follow up on that. Good. (Laughter.)

Congressman Goss, good to see you again.

REP. GOSS: Good morning, Senator.

SEN. DEWINE: Good to be back.

For the record, I might add that you and I had the privilege of a bill which certainly not a partisan bill at all, and that was the Ricky Ray bill --

REP. GOSS: Yes, sir.

SEN. DEWINE: -- where I think did some good for some folks who had been hurt by the government, and certainly had been hurt, who acquired AIDS because of the blood supply. And I certainly enjoyed working with you on that, and that certainly was an issue that had nothing to do with politics at all, but certainly had everything to do about trying to help people. And you were able to lead the charge on that, and I thank you and salute you for that.

REP. GOSS: Thank you, sir.

SEN. DEWINE: Let me ask this question. As a-those of us on this committee-and you on the House committee-really were consumers of intelligence, as is the executive branch. It strikes me that we are many times in the position of wanting to have a consensus from the intelligence community. But it seems to me also that we also have the need to see where the dissent is coming from in the intelligence community, if there is dissent.

And I bring this up because we have in front of us a number of proposals that seem to consolidate the power. And I wonder if there might be a tendency, if any of these proposals are adopted, for the dissent to be stifled, or at least for the ultimate consumer never to see the dissent?

For example, INR, I've noticed a few times has had a different opinion. At least on one occasion I noticed they were right; everybody else seemed to be wrong.

Do you want to comment on that and just how we make sure that as we do these reforms that we make sure that the consumer-the president, the Congress-at least make sure-when we see the consensus, that we at least make sure that we still have somebody out there who is independent and getting an alternative view, and that we also see that alternative view?

REP. GOSS: Yes, sir, I agree with that very much. I think there is a system in place now that has not worked as well as it should have, or perhaps as it could have. I don't know the answer, whether it's a "should" or "could," but it has not worked as well. '

I believe that dissent is a critical part of the process. You want the differing opinions, you want the competitive analysis, you want to avoid groupthink-things that you've pointed out very well in this committee's study, I think now recognized by the DI in a paper that I understand you all are going to get. I mentioned it last week. It's a study that's worth taking a quick look at.

I do believe that it's very important to have in the reorganization, however it is done, the understanding that the 15 elements within the intelligence community operate as elements but also as part of a larger whole, and that they have a resposibility not to only-unto themselves, for their own agencies-the FBI, INR, whatever it may be-but to participate into the network as a whole. That means we're going to have to take some mechanical steps, like co- location and things like that.

We've had some recent disputes; they are continuing to happen. This process is not going as well as I would like it to go. There is room for improvement. I will certainly say that. And part of the reorganization that you all decide is going to color very much what it looks like. But I think we all understand we have to do it.

I think when you have dissent you have to understand why the opposing opinions or views were rejected. I think it's not just simply it was a vote of three to two; I think it's this is because when we added the pluses and minuses on the yellow sheet we got three pluses and two minuses, and these were the pluses and these were the minuses. But what we don't know is this, and if we knew that, that might tip it. I think that enrichment process is very imporatnt.

Now, not every customer is going to want to know that, but every customer needs to be able to get to that if they do want to know it. So I would suggest that it will work two ways: if you, as a customer on this committee, want to go behind what the finished product is that you read or what the daily SEIB is or anything else, and want to get into that, then I suggest you have the right to do that and should do that, and that the community has the responsibility to come forward and say look, this is how we weighed it.

SEN. DEWINE: It seems also to me, though, that as the report is prepared there is some responsibility in the inteligence community to give us that alternative view even if we don't ask for it, because many times --

REP. GOSS: Yes, sir --

SEN. DEWINE: Many times we're not going to-we don't know-you don't know the question to ask sometimes. You don't know if there was a minority view unless someone says it.

REP. GOSS: That's absolutely correct, sir.

One of the problems that we have is a system now of trying to protect our sources and methods and sensitive matters where we use a system that doesn't work very well. It's-you know, how much credibility can we give this? Do we have confidence in it? Well, what does high confidence mean? If you say high confidence four times and it's only right three times, turns out to be only right three times, then the next time you hear high confidence, it's not quite that high.

So I think we do need a different way of telling our consumers, and I agree that those dissents are important to point out. I mean, some people say footnotes do it. Actually, footnotes don't do it. Most people don't have the time.

SEN. DEWINE: Let me ask another question somewhat related to this, and that is a problem that we have seen; and that is, when the analysts are so separated from their sources that the-they do not have the ability-and we've seen this when some cases were-mistakes were made-they don't have the full ability to analyze or to judge how good the sources are. And we've seen several specific cases where they did not really know that, and there was this wall.

Now I understand sometimes why there is a wall there. You have to protect your sources. How do you deal with that problem and still-how do you protect the source but at the same time make sure the analyst, who is going to ultimately be giving us the information or the president of the United States the information, can make a fair judgment about how good the quality of the source is, so he or she can make that good opinion to us?

REP. GOSS: Senator, you've correctly described a problem which we obviously need to fix rather quickly. And there has been-there have been efforts in the past to try and get the DI and the DO to use one agency's area, working more closely together. There is an esprit de corps in both of those elements, and it's a good thing to have, but it's got to work more closely.

There are a number of ways that suggested-the white paper that the DI has put out talks about a number of things. If there were resources, we would like to put some of our analysts out in the field, working with some of the case officers, so that they can understand better what the problems are out there and so the case officer can understand better what it is the analyst absolutely needs.

But unfortunately it's not just-the problem doesn't just lie there. It lies-it goes beyond that, that we do not have analysts talking to analysts, as opposed to analysts talking to collectors. We find analysts in one agency not talking to analysts in another agency.

Now hopefully TTIC, in terms of terrorism, is going to deal with that. But that's only terrorism. There are other problems out there. There's WMD problems. There's narco-trafficking problems. There's racketeering problems. There's political intelligence, all of those things that you need to deal with, which aren't covered in the TTIC, necessarily.

So I think that the area you have focused on is the area that is broken in the analytical part and that it does need attention. And we have some ideas, and the people involved in that are aware that we are looking for ideas. So I think we have a will to do a correction, and I believe you will see progress. If I'm confirmed, I assure you, you have my word on that.

SEN. DEWINE: As you're aware, we passed a few years ago the Nazi war crimes bill, which called on the CIA to provide additional new information, to go back in their files, open up their files. That has worked fairly well.

I don't want to get into great detail about this today. But there is still information that needs to come out, and I would just like your assurance today that-I was the author of that bill here in the Senate, and I would like your assurance today that you will continue to work with us on that.

REP. GOSS: Yes, sir. Of course I will continue to work with you on that, if I'm confirmed.

SEN. DEWINE: I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.