[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-165]
INTERAGENCY NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: PRAGMATIC STEPS TOWARDS A MORE
INTEGRATED FUTURE
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JUNE 9, 2010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
57-702 WASHINGTON : 2010
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OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
GLENN NYE, Virginia CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
Drew Walter, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Trey Howard, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, June 9, 2010, Interagency National Security Reform:
Pragmatic Steps Towards a More Integrated Future............... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, June 9, 2010.......................................... 27
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2010
INTERAGENCY NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: PRAGMATIC STEPS TOWARDS A MORE
INTEGRATED FUTURE
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee...................... 1
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.............. 2
WITNESSES
Adams, Dr. Gordon, Distinguished Fellow, The Henry L. Stimson
Center, and Professor of International Relations, American
University..................................................... 5
Locher, James R., III, President and Chief Executive Officer,
Project on National Security Reform............................ 3
Pendleton, John H., Director, Force Structure and Defense
Planning Issues, Defense Capabilities and Management Team, U.S.
Government Accountability Office............................... 9
Thompson, Dr. James R., Associate Professor and Head, Department
of Public Administration, University of Illinois-Chicago....... 7
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Adams, Dr. Gordon............................................ 50
Locher, James R., III........................................ 34
Pendleton, John H............................................ 62
Thompson, Dr. James R........................................ 59
Wittman, Hon. Rob............................................ 31
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
INTERAGENCY NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: PRAGMATIC STEPS TOWARDS A MORE
INTEGRATED FUTURE
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 9, 2010.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:03 p.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Dr. Snyder. Welcome to the Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee hearing on interagency national security reform.
Over the past decade, dozens of major government commissions,
think tanks, and other experts have recommended significant
changes to better integrate and apply all of the country's
capabilities to national security challenges. The 9/11
Commission, the Hart-Rudman Commission, the Hurricane Katrina
Lessons Learned Working Group--all have cited a lack of
interagency coordination as a key weakness of our national
security system.
I am pleased to see the administration of President Obama
recognize these problems. Secretary Gates, Secretary Clinton,
and National Security Adviser Jones also support reform. Most
recently, President Obama's National Security Strategy released
in May highlighted the need for enhanced integration, saying,
``The executive branch must do its part by developing
integrated plans and approaches that leverage the capabilities
across its departments and agencies to deal with the issues we
confront. Collaboration across the government must guide our
actions.''
I commend the President and his team on his leadership and
am eager to see how he intends to implement this vision.
But Congress must play its part, too. In fact, Congress
must lead the way, just as it did with the Goldwater-Nichols
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. We have been here before.
We have seen similar problems; the same inertia against reform.
We have also seen success as the culture of our military
shifted to fully embrace jointness as a fundamental operational
principle. As with Goldwater-Nichols, interagency national
security reform will be a long, difficult process. But we must
start with practical steps in the right direction. And that is
what we are here today to discuss--practical and realistic
near-term steps that we can take to improve interagency
coordination and collaboration.
The witnesses we have today have a variety of professional
backgrounds and perspectives, but all are experts on how our
interagency national security system works and how it doesn't.
I look forward to hearing their recommendations on practical,
near-term steps the Armed Services Committee and the larger
Congress should take to improve the system.
Now I recognize Mr. Wittman for any opening statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA,
RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much
to our witnesses for taking time out to be with us this
afternoon.
I first want to commend Chairman Snyder for calling this
hearing. As you know, we addressed the subject of interagency
reform and the Project on National Security Reform's [PNSR's]
December, 2008 report, ``Forging a New Shield,'' just over a
year ago, and in that hearing, we heard expert testimony on
this vexing issue from distinguished experts who offered a
range of opinions. We expected and welcomed a diversity of
views, especially on this committee and especially on this
topic.
There seems to be general agreement that we need a better
system of coordinating our national security efforts, but not
necessarily agreement on how. The nature of the Washington
bureaucracy is to maintain the status quo both in the executive
and legislative branches. If we are able to institute new
structures and processes in the administration and Congress, we
can expect those processes will remain in place for many years.
Whatever we do, if anything, has to be carefully
considered, and we must be sure that national security will be
improved by the changes because we will live with them for many
years. The principle challenges lie in resolving command and
budget authorities, yet another issue shared by the Congress
and the executive branch. Last year, I cited the Intelligence
Reform Act of 2004 as a rare example of recent interagency
reform. And while these reforms are real, the Congress
struggled with how much command authority and budget authority
to vest in the new Director of National Intelligence [DNI] with
apparent consequences to this day.
I am pleased to see that the PNSR report published as part
of a follow-up or the follow-up report itself last September
entitled ``Turning Ideas into Action,'' which does just that--
proposes specific measures that can be taken to achieve a more
cohesive and agile national security structure. I am pleased
that the principal author of both reports is with us today. I
appreciate that. I would like to have today's witnesses apply
the PNSR suggested structure or their own thoughts to a couple
of today's real world problems.
First of great concern to this subcommittee is the
planning, coordinating, and executing of an effective
interagency response to our national efforts in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. What would you do differently? The second and no less
urgent but less complex: How would you manage the Federal
Government's response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
I am grateful to have such distinguished witnesses here
before us today to comment on the PNSR's work, and I look
forward to your testimony.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 31.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Wittman, for your comments today
and for all you have done on this full committee and
subcommittee through your time and service here.
We are pleased today to have four witnesses: Mr. James
Locher, III, the President and CEO of the Project on National
Security Reform; Dr. Gordon Adams, Distinguished Fellow at the
Henry L. Stimson Center; Dr. James Thompson, Associate
Professor and Head of the Department of Public Administration,
University of Illinois, Chicago; Mr. John Pendleton, Director,
Force Structure and Defense Planning Issues at U.S. Government
Accountability Office.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you all for being here. We will start
with Mr. Locher and then proceed right on down the line. We
will have the light system go off. When the red light goes on,
that mean five minutes have gone by. We will not hit you or
anything, but the sooner you wrap up your time after that, the
sooner we can get to our questions and discussions.
So, Mr. Locher, we will begin with you. Your opening
statements will be made part of the record.
Mr. Locher.
STATEMENT OF JAMES R. LOCHER III, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM
Mr. Locher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Snyder,
Ranking Member Wittman, and members of the subcommittee. I am
delighted to appear before you to testify on national security
reform. I want to commend the committee for its leadership on
this critical issue. It reminds me of this subcommittee's role
in formulating the House's version of the landmark Goldwater-
Nichols Act. And I should mention that a current member of the
subcommittee, Mr. Spratt, was a member of the subcommittee back
during the Goldwater-Nichols formulation.
The lessons of Goldwater-Nichols are instructive on the
role Congress must play on national security reform. Goldwater-
Nichols has been a historic success. It produced the world's
premier joint warfighting force. But it must be remembered that
entrenched Pentagon interests bitterly opposed this
legislation. A 4-year, 241-day struggle between the Armed
Services Committees and the Department of Defense ensued. The
committees used every tool at their disposal to pressure, prod,
question, and introduce new ideas. National security reform
will require even more congressional energy to overcome
executive branch inertia. Despite its difficulty, national
security reform is not impossible.
Again, the Goldwater-Nichols experience is instructive.
When work on that Act began, 95 percent of the experts
predicted it would never happen.
Mr. Chairman, as you mentioned, President Obama's National
Security Strategy has reinvigorated the drive to transform the
national security system. Let there be no mistake. The
strategy's goals cannot be achieved without sweeping
transformation. In organizational terms, the strategy calls
for, one, a strengthening of national capacity through a whole-
of-government approach; two, updating, balancing and
integrating all tools of American power; three, broaden the
scope of national security; four, emphasizing the foundations
of national power, sound fiscal policy, education, energy,
science and technology, and health; fifth, aligning resources
with strategy; sixth, taking a longer view; seventh, forming
strategic partnerships with organizations outside of
government, essentially taking a whole-of-Nation approach.
These goals endorse many of the ideas that the Project on
National Security forum has put forth.
With Congress's important role in mind, the subcommittee
asked for testimony on pragmatic, near-term steps that can be
taken to move forward on national security reform. My written
statement identifies 10 such steps. I will speak to three
important ones. By far the most important step would be to
require the President to submit an implementation plan for the
organizational changes prescribed by the new National Security
Strategy. Most strategy documents contain a lofty set of goals
which go unrealized when there is no follow-through. Congress
must insist on executive branch attention to the organizational
goals that the President established. For each of his 23 goals,
the President should identify the specific reforms that are
needed and milestones for their achievement. Every year,
Congress should ask for a scorecard measuring progress towards
these reforms and for an updated implementation plan.
The second and related near-term step would be to require
the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to
submit a plan for achieving the needed organizational capacity
of the National Security Staff [NSS], realizing the whole-of-
government integrated approach articulated by the National
Security Strategy will require a significant strengthening of
the National Security Staff. Today, that staff is under-
resourced and institutionally weak. The Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs, who does not even
exist in the law, has only an advisory role.
The National Security Staff has become the most important
staff in the national security system, if not in the world.
This evolution has not been properly recognized. The staff
totals 230 people; has a tiny budget--$8.6 million when General
Jones took over; and is poorly supported. National security
reform needs to start at the top of the system with the
National Security Staff.
One of the most, if not the most, important reforms
advanced by Goldwater-Nichols was joint officer management. By
creating incentives, requirements, and standards for joint
officers, those provisions significantly improve the
performance of joint duty and led to creation of a joint
culture. Congress acted on the joint officer issue because it
had concluded, ``For the most part, military officers do not
want to be assigned to joint duty; are pressured or monitored
for loyalty by their services while serving on joint
assignments; are not prepared by either education or experience
to perform their joint duties; and serve only a relatively
short period once they have learned their jobs.''
Analyses of the interagency personnel situation reveals
similar problems. A near-term step with enormous potential
would be to establish an interagency personnel system to create
the proper incentives, education, and training for personnel
assigned to interagency positions. This reform is being studied
on Capitol Hill and could begin the major transformation that
is needed.
In conclusion, I, once more, commend Chairman Snyder and
Ranking Member Wittman for holding this hearing and for
searching for pragmatic, near-term steps that would compel the
start of the bold transformation that the Nation desperately
needs. The national security system must be modernized to meet
the challenges of the 21st century. The task will be
monumental, but there is no alternative. Without sweeping
changes, the Nation will experience repeated failures, wasted
resources, and continue to decline in American standing and
influence. We can and must find the resolve and political will
to create a modern national security system.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Locher.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Locher can be found in the
Appendix on page 34.]
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Adams.
STATEMENT OF DR. GORDON ADAMS, DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, THE HENRY
L. STIMSON CENTER, AND PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
Dr. Adams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join Jim Locher in
congratulating the subcommittee on having these hearings and
the Congress in general for beginning over the last few years
to take this set of issues more seriously I think than has
happened in a long time. So both Chairman Snyder, Ranking
Member Wittman, thank you very much for the hearing and the
opportunity to talk at this hearing.
I can join in many of the suggestions and recommendations
that my colleague and friend, Jim Locher, has put before you. I
want to come at this issue from a slightly different angle and
put some more fodder in the trough, if you will, for
consideration by the Hill.
The process of reforming agencies and for reforming
interagency process is enormously hard. If it wasn't, it would
have happened. And it hasn't happened yet. A lot of good
effort, including PNSR's, has gone into trying to push all
aspects of the system in the direction of reform. We know how
hard it is, having seen in recent years the experience of such
changes as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
the Department of Homeland Security [DHS], the National
Counterterrorism Center [NCTC], all of which have had their
strengths and obvious weaknesses as instruments of reform in
the national security system. So one goes at this issue with
some caution in terms of the results you can expect from
shuffling boxes, changing processes, changing committees, and
so on. It is very difficult.
To me, the key issue here that I try to identify in my
testimony is: What is the problem we are trying to solve?
Because any set of reforms really needs to look at what is it
we are trying to solve. Not just let's reform for the sake of
reform, but what is the specific problem we are tackling, and
what is the mission of the United States Government and its
national security agencies in tackling an agenda of reform?
I would submit to you, as I suggest in my testimony, that
one of the major reasons that we have this interest and these
sets of hearings derives from an experience that Ranking Member
Wittman mentioned--Afghanistan, but also Iraq. That is to say
the performance of the American government in Iraq and in
Afghanistan, and by relation, Pakistan, as you mentioned. The
circumstances of those particular cases are quite unique,
however. These are cases where the United States actually used
a major kinetic capacity to intervene with the goal of
overthrowing a regime inheriting instability, social chaos,
economic reconstruction, governance, if you will, in those two
countries by virtue of our own direct military action and
ultimately an insurgency designed to oppose the government we
supported and our own forces in those countries.
So the reform question that grew out of that set of
problems, Iraq and Afghanistan, has been defined as the absence
of a civilian capacity to deploy alongside U.S. forces on the
civilian side of this kind of kinetic exercise. If we reform to
that case, we run the risk of fighting the last post-war. And
while there are real problems in those cases, and they identify
some very interesting ones, we do need to ask ourselves, as we
approach a reform agenda: Are we tackling the right problem if
we reform to build that kind of interagency relationship and
that kind of capacity.
So mission, to me, is the key starting point. My testimony
posits that mission or problem is not so much the invasion,
applied civilian capability, and terror. It is governance,
which is the absence of weakness, fragility, brittleness in
governance in key areas of the world where our interests are at
stake. The key problem, then, is the absence of a clear
civilian sense of mission in tackling this problem, which is
primarily a civilian problem. It may be largely non-kinetic,
preventive, and smaller in nature than the cases of Iraq and
Afghanistan.
So the focus of reform needs to be on the civilian agencies
and capabilities first. Not the interagency first, so much as
the capabilities on the civilian side where, as I say in my
testimony, we have a diaspora of organizations and
institutions. We have the absence of a strategic planning
culture in those agencies and inadequate resourcing dollars and
people and appropriate training for its people to conduct their
responsibilities in fulfilling that mission of governance.
We have a large imbalance as a consequence between State
and DOD [the Department of Defense] in resources and culture,
which has led to an expansion of Defense missions. But that
runs the risk of every problem looking like Iraq and
Afghanistan. One of the key issues for the interagency then is
how do we restore that balance? I suggest in the testimony
reforms that can be applied in DOD that would both discipline
and clarify DOD's mission in the foreign affairs agencies where
we can deal with civilians, capabilities, resources, and
training, and in the interagency, where, in particular, I would
focus on NSC/OMB [National Security Council/Office of
Management and Budget] coordination, the creation of strategic
planning capabilities and mission planning oversight. And in
the Congress I suggest, among other things, a single budget
function for 150 and 050, to use budget speak, and joint
oversight hearings in such areas as security assistance,
governance, and civilian capabilities.
The only caveat that I will put in closing, Mr. Chairman,
is that we be beware of the sin of hubris. That is to say, it
is not clear that we can or should be responsible for dealing
with these kinds of problems internationally in every instance,
and it is not clear that we are always very good at doing it,
even building the best interagency and agency capabilities to
do it.
With that, I will submit the rest of my testimony for the
record and look forward to your questions.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Adams.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Adams can be found in the
Appendix on page 50.]
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Thompson.
STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES R. THOMPSON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND
HEAD, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, UNIVERSITY OF
ILLINOIS-CHICAGO
Dr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honorable
members, for the opportunity to testify here today. About a
year ago, my colleague, Rob Seidner, who is here today, he and
I received a grant from the IBM Center for the Business of
Government to write a report on human capital reforms in the
Intelligence Community. The reason we were interested in the
Intelligence Community is it was the only example we were aware
of in the Federal Government of what we call a federated human
resource system, whereby personnel authorities were shared by
the center--in the case, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence--and the elements or agencies, of which there are
about 16.
The centerpiece of the Intelligence Community human capital
reforms was the joint duty program, which was mandated by the
Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, and in turn, by the 9/11
Commission, which identified a lack of interagency
collaboration as one of the causes of the unfortunate events of
that day. The joint duty program, of course, is modeled after
the Goldwater-Nichols program in the armed services, which is
why they are considered to have been a success. The intent was
to break down parochial attitudes among the senior officials
within the agencies by having them serve time in agencies other
than the agency in which they spent most of their careers.
The Intelligence Community also developed a series of other
reforms, some of which were in support of the joint duty
program. For example, one of the concerns was that officials
would not participate in joint duty if they felt that their pay
and/or promotion opportunity would be at risk. So the
Intelligence Community spent a lot of time developing a common
compensation system, which they called the National
Intelligence Civilian Compensation program. That program
includes a pay-for-performance element and pay banding, et
cetera. That program has been halted temporarily at least by
the National Defense Authorization Act. A report just came out
last week from the National Academy on Public Administration
which, by and large, gave the program a positive review. So it
is possible that the community will restart implementation of
that program.
The community also developed a common performance
management program. That is, officials throughout the community
are assessed according to the same performance elements, so
that if an individual does in fact accept a joint duty
assignment in another agency, he or she can be assured of
having his or her performance appraised on the same basic
elements regardless of where he or she goes.
Other elements of the Intelligence Community's reforms
included a common human resource information system. There is
also a training component. The Office of the Director of
National Intelligence has created a National Intelligence
University [NIU], and there is joint leadership training being
provided through the NIU to officials who are participating in
the joint duty program. I should add, by the way, that the
joint duty program has been phased in and will not be fully
effective until October of this year.
Lessons learned from our research. One is that as a
consequence of the nature of the authority or lack thereof
given the Director of National Intelligence, the Intelligence
Community went through a highly collaborative process to design
the joint duty program. A downside was it took them a long time
to do it, but an upside has been that there is very significant
buy-in among the agencies into the joint duty program, such
that it is likely to be sustained over time.
A down side, however, is that it is somewhat vulnerable to
having agencies kind of exempt from some of the provisions of
their program. For example, the agreed-upon policy is that only
the DNI and the Under Secretary of the Defense for Intelligence
can provide waivers to the joint duty requirement. However,
that is simply in the form of what the Intelligence Community
calls a treaty among the agencies. Legally, any agency head
could waive that particular provision and decide on his or her
own to promote somebody without appropriate joint duty
certification.
So the issue of the authority of the DNI does figure
importantly in this discussion of how to structure a joint duty
program more broadly.
Another important lesson that we had learned was the idea
of making sure that an infrastructure is in place to support
the joint duty program. I mentioned the common compensation
system that the Intelligence Community is trying to put into
place to facilitate transfers.
A final observation would be with regard to the Senior
Executive Service [SES] itself, which is that program was
intended to consist of a corps of generalists, but has never
really achieved that vision. It is largely because most of the
members of the SES spend most of their careers in a single
agency. I think that is, in part, a consequence of the fact the
SES assignments are made at the Department level. In Britain,
in contrast, the senior members of the civil service are
considered a corporate asset and SES assignments are made
centrally at the government level. I think there is a lesson to
be learned both by the government in general but also the
national security community as to a possible way of structuring
any prospective joint duty program across the community, which
would be to make sure assignments are made centrally rather
than by each department independently.
That will conclude my testimony. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Thompson.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Thompson can be found in the
Appendix on page 59.]
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Pendleton.
STATEMENT OF JOHN H. PENDLETON, DIRECTOR, FORCE STRUCTURE AND
DEFENSE PLANNING ISSUES, DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT
TEAM, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Pendleton. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wittman, and
members of the subcommittee, thanks for inviting me today to
discuss GAO's [the Government Accountability Office's] work
related to interagency collaboration. Given the growing call
for better collaboration, we recently published a report that
summarized GAO's body of work in this area. Our report cites
dozen of examples. Several of those are included in my prepared
statement. Let me briefly highlight three that illustrate the
challenges in working across agency boundaries toward common
goals.
First, our work looking at the planning to manage a
pandemic flu outbreak found that the strategies lacked clarity
on who would lead efforts--Health and Human Services or
Homeland Security. Should we have a significant flu outbreak,
sorting out who is in charge could waste valuable time. Second,
the differences in size and culture between the Defense
Department and the civilian agencies create a number of
difficulties. DOD dwarfs other agencies. DOD and State
literally divide the world up differently and they take very
different approaches to planning. In the past, DOD plans were
drawn up in isolation, with interagency consultation largely an
afterthought. We have made a number of recommendations on this.
And to its credit, DOD has begun to take some steps toward
involving civilian agencies earlier in its planning.
Third, a failure to connect the dots is often blamed after
security lapses. This is often ultimately traceable to
inadequate information sharing. Our recent work on biometrics
data; information such as fingerprints and images of iris in
the eye found that DOD was collecting information in the field
in ways that made it incompatible with Homeland Security and
FBI databases.
Next, I would like to describe a couple of organizations
within DOD that have served as laboratories of a sort for
refining interagency collaboration. Northern Command [NORTHCOM]
and Africa Command [AFRICOM]. Such regional commands are where
military efforts are conceived and planned. Both NORTHCOM and
AFRICOM have missions that require them to work closely with
other agencies and other nations, both are relatively new, and
both have faced myriad problems that illustrate the challenges
being discussed today. Hurricane Katrina made evident to me for
NORTHCOM to synchronize its efforts with a range of federal,
state, and local agencies. We recently completed a
comprehensive examination of NORTHCOM's efforts to enhance
interagency coordination for homeland defense and civil-support
missions and found a number of gaps still exist. We found, for
example, unclear roles and responsibilities still exist. DOD's
overarching guidance is 15-, sometimes 20-years old, and it
pre-dates the creation of NORTHCOM. This creates a number of
problems, not the least of which is many of these directives
show the Army in charge, which they were before NORTHCOM was
created. More concerning is that NORTHCOM's own assessments of
its capabilities show a number of gaps concerned about the
ability to share a common operational picture or plan in the
interagency.
Looking outside the United States, DOD's newest combatant
command is Africa Command. It spotlights how the lines of
national security, defense, diplomacy, and especially
development are becoming more and more blurred. A lot of what
AFRICOM does is not traditional warfighting. It involves
strengthening African military capabilities, helping nations
respond to crises, building infrastructure, such as schools and
hospitals. Creating a blended command with personnel from other
agencies embedded and serving and key positions was one of the
ways that AFRICOM sought to improve collaboration. However,
interagency personnel just weren't available in the numbers
that DOD had hoped. It was far from clear what those personnel
would do when they arrived at AFRICOM. And possibly most
important, it was uncertain to them what impact serving at
AFRICOM would have on their own careers.
Finally, let me give you an example how interagency
challenges can play out on the ground. Our recent work on
AFRICOM's 1,600 person taskforce in the Horn of Africa region
revealed that DOD personnel are not always adequately trained
to work in Africa, and this has resulted in a number of
cultural missteps. One example that seems small but I think
illuminates a larger problem, AFRICOM'S taskforce distributed
used clothing to local villagers. But that offended the Muslims
during Ramadan. Had they talked to U.S. Embassy, State, and
AID, they could have provided guidance on sensitive cultural
issues like this. We found a number of similar issues.
Given that the type of work DOD is doing in Africa is
different from what military personnel are normally trained
for, we recommend that AFRICOM develop a program to increase
cultural awareness and training on working in an interagency
environment. Such training, not just at AFRICOM, but across DOD
and the interagency, will become even more important as
national security issues become increasingly blended across
multiple agencies.
That concludes my statement. I would be happy to take any
questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pendleton can be found in
the Appendix on page 62.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you all for your testimony today, and
also all four of you have a long history of public service in
these areas and others. We will all put ourselves on the five-
minute clock here and probably have time for at least a couple
of rounds of questions and maybe a little bit more.
One of the challenges that I think, not just us, but anyone
who looks at this topic has, and doesn't spend all their time
in it as perhaps all of you do, is trying to get a handle
around exactly what the problem is.
Mr. Pendleton, I thought your one-paged, bite-size morsel
of what GAO found when we go right to the one-pager, which we
are House Members, so we look for the bouillon cubes in these
things. But, of course, you called your report: The challenges
and solutions to strengthen interagency collaboration. I am
going to ask Mr. Locher in a moment if he thinks we should
define the goal as being more than just collaboration. But you
have four problems areas: Developing and implementing
overarching strategies; creating collaborative organizations,
which I think gets to a whole culture of different
institutions; developing a well-trained workforce; and sharing
and integrating national security information.
It seems like that is a construct that I can kind of get my
mind around. We need a shared strategy; a culture that
recognizes collaboration is important; a good workforce; and
the ability to share information.
Mr. Locher, do you think that description is at the heart
of what you all are trying to solve in the work you have done
in the last several years?
Mr. Locher. Mr. Chairman, I think the things that have been
mentioned in Mr. Pendleton's statement cover many things that
need to be done--the strategy, collaborative organizations,
better training and education of the workforce, and sharing
innovation. But if you had foreshadowed this question to me
about collaboration, I think in many cases we need a lot more
than collaboration. We actually need integrated effort. We need
to be able to create teams well in advance of any sort of
crisis that can really formulate policy on an integrated basis,
that can do strategy on an integrated basis, that can figure
out planning on an integrated, can figure out how we are going
to align resources, and then if we actually have to conduct an
operation, can do so on an integrated basis.
Dr. Snyder. So if I understand, what you are saying is you
believe there is a difference between integration and
collaboration. Collaboration implies perhaps two separate
organizations that see a need to get together maybe on a
regular basis, but they are still separate organizations. You
are talking about somehow they are integrated together and
locked in together on a more permanent basis.
How do you respond to Mr. Locher's comments there, Mr.
Pendleton?
Mr. Pendleton. When we wrote the paper, the four areas are
interrelated and describing them as creating collaboration is
just a construct to try to understand that you have got to
start with strategy, you have got to work on the organizations
and the people, and you have got to teach the individuals how
to share information. If you turn this another way, over the
years, looking at different organizations, what tends to happen
to organizations is they start out with de-confliction. Just
letting each other know what they are going to do. Then it
hopefully moves up the integration chain. You are beginning to
coordinate and ultimately you have an integrated strategy.
DOD's efforts in, I think, the drug wars is a good example
of something that 20 years ago you heard many of these same
concerns being raised. As a young man, I was down in Key West
hearing this; DOD had no business and needed to stay in its
lane. Today, I have got other work going on and you hear a
very, very different story. This stuff takes time.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Adams, you made a comment that Iraq and
Afghanistan should not be seen as the motivation of why we need
to change, which, I think, came from those very public
discussions we had several years ago from Secretary Gates that
there was inadequate civilian personnel available. And I think
if I am reading you right, your point is that we should not see
that as a definition of the problem; that, in fact, more likely
than not we will have situations where the civilians will be in
the lead, where the military needs to support them, rather than
the military saying we need civilian support? Would you amplify
on that, please?
Dr. Adams. I would be happy to, Mr. Chairman. It is a very
important question. It goes back to what I was saying at the
beginning, what is the problem we are trying to solve, what is
the mission we are trying to deliver. A lot of the undertone of
the discussion of what we need in the interagency is a
discussion of how we ought to anticipate and be prepared to
intervene in crisis. But crisis means many things. The crisis
that we tend to focus on is a very large intervention aiming at
the use of military force to overthrowing another government
where we do inherit an enormous problem of governance, one
which we have demonstrated we are not good at dealing with or
takes us a long time. As somebody once said, we will find
almost all the solutions that are wrong before we find the
right one. That, however, is not the typical kind of crisis
that we are likely to come across. Typically, if we are focused
on this problem of crisis, and that is just one set of where
interagency has implications--what we are looking at ranges
probably at its most demanding from the kind of, if you will,
stabilization/peacekeeping mission that we did in the 1990s in
the Balkans, down to humanitarian missions where we are
delivering food assistance, humanitarian assistance, tents,
water bladders, the kind of kit people need to survive in a
disaster.
That is the typical range of issues that we deal with and
arguably in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, the kind of
typical issue that we are going to want to deal with. Those
kinds of problems tend, in my mind, to group themselves around
a concept of governance. That the issue here is not so much
insurgency as it is the inability of countries in various
strategically important regions of the world to actually
provide their own stability, their own public water, public
services, their own social justice, their own legal justice,
their own capacity to grow, develop and prosper. Governments
have difficulties doing that in certain regions of the world.
Defined that way, the kinetic requirement for what we do in
the American government arguably is rather small. It is not
invisible, but it is rather smaller than the kinetic capability
we would maintain to do like Iraq or Afghanistan. And it may be
quite peripheral to the question of how a civilian architecture
actually over the long-term plans and deals with strengthening
governance in those countries, in those regions, not something
arguably the United States can do alone.
I think the National Security Strategy recognizes this,
that there are international organizations, allies, regional
partners, all of which can play a role, even private NGOs,
nongovernmental organizations, and business that can help deal
with this issue of governance. It is an ongoing long-term
problem, and arguably the precursor to any crisis that we are
going to face that we need to plan for.
So what I am saying is structuring the interagency to be an
anticipatory large crisis manager of the relationship between
large kinetic forces and large civilian capability to intervene
in or respond to a crisis in another country may be, in a
sense, overplanning the requirement that we are actually going
to face.
So the interagency, to my mind, involves both
strengthening, particularly the civilian capacities, to deal
with those kinds of governance problems and then finding a way
in the interagency space to relate what the kinetic requirement
might be to dealing with a particular situation where we are
going to intervene.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman, for five minutes.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to go back
to my original comments and start with Mr. Locher and get your
thoughts on this. Really, what we are talking about here and
all the efforts whether it is in Pakistan or Afghanistan or in
the Gulf is planning, coordinating, and executing efforts among
a lot of different agencies and lot of different levels of
operations. So let me pose this: If you look at Afghanistan,
Iraq, and even efforts in Pakistan, are there things that we
should be doing differently, and if you look at efforts in the
Gulf as we see interagency cooperation there, what would your
suggestion be as to that scenario? Obviously, we are in the
beginning stages of that management. But looking at those two
examples that obviously have attracted a lot of attention and
are attracting a lot of attention, give me your thoughts about
what would be done differently in theatre and what you would do
as far as managing the current operations there in the Gulf?
Mr. Locher. A great question, Mr. Wittman. Let me start
with Afghanistan and Pakistan. It also applies in Iraq. All of
our efforts there are way too separate in the United States
Government. We have had more collaboration more recently but we
have not had the integrated effort that is absolutely required.
I want to take an example. There is a study that is going
to come out from the National Defense University about
interagency high-value targeting teams in Iraq, which many
people in the military believe are more important than the
surge. Special operation forces were going out and looking for
high-value terrorist targets. When they did so on their own,
they had limited success. There was no mechanism to create an
interagency team to go off and do this. But they recognized
that need. And sort of through the force of personalities, the
leaders of the special operations teams actually put together
an effort that involved 8 or 10 departments and agencies.
Now that capacity ended up producing tremendous results. It
is that kind of effort that we need, whether we are talking
about the oil spill in the Gulf or whether we are talking about
operations in Pakistan or Afghanistan or in Iraq. And if you
think about it, the military has taken the approach that we
need to be able to operate from a regional basis. We have no
civilian equivalent to that.
On the civilian side, we are down at the country-level
linked straight back to Washington. And so when we are doing
Afghanistan-Pakistan issues, you have that difficulty of how
you work across there. But we don't have an integrated
taskforce. When the military goes off, it creates a joint
taskforce with unity of command to do whatever is necessary.
Now, in Afghanistan, it is really a political issue. So we
need a civilian at the top of this chain of command making
certain that everything we are doing, whether it is political,
economic, or military fits into our overall strategy. So it is
in that direction that our government needs to move.
Dr. Adams. Can I take a crack at that question,
Congressman? The Afghanistan-Pakistan situation in particular.
I am not going to sit here as an expert on an oil spill effort
that obviously is still underway. But in the Afghanistan-
Pakistan situation, my own view is that the problem in
Afghanistan and Pakistan results less from the absence of an
integrated capability than it does from two issues; one is an
inherent lack of attention to the importance of Afghanistan
that goes back a number of years. In other words, we simply
took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan while we focused on
Iraq. The consequence was we let time slip by that was valuable
time where we might have conceivably had greater success.
And secondly, arguably, what I came back to in my
testimony, which is this is an inherently difficult situation.
A better process and a better integrated effort still might not
be able to resolve the challenges that we faced in Afghanistan,
which are enormously complex and enormously local. So I say
about the sin of hubris, it is being careful to know that even
our best effort may not produce a better policy outcome or on
that is optimal in terms of what our own interests might seek.
That said, I think in those cases in particular, again, I
would not argue by extrapolation to other crises, the absence
of a focused civilian capacity in some areas is obviously one
of the critical factors. We might have developed it earlier. We
might have applied it earlier if we had focused on Afghanistan
to begin with as a problem we needed to deal with. But I will
hold out the jury in terms of our capacity to actually on our
own determine the outcome of that situation.
Mr. Wittman. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman, I have to say you are looking very
refreshed and sounding very intelligent for a man who won a
primary election yesterday. Congratulations.
Mrs. Davis for five minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Thank you all for being here and
discussing interagency with us. I think sometimes people just
kind of gloss over it when we talk about that. But it is very
important, and we are here to try and assess where are we and
how far you think we have come at this point?
I wonder whether--I think, Dr. Adams, I think you mentioned
getting to the balance of these issues. And I am wondering can
we do that without a joint budget? Secretary Clinton mentioned
a unified national security budget. She said we have to start
looking at a national security budget. We can't look at
Defense, State Department, and USAID without Defense
overwhelming the combined effort of the other two and without
us falling back into the old stovepipes that you have all
mentioned that I think are no longer relevant for the challenge
of today. So what do you all think? Would you support a unified
budget and how in the heck would we get there?
Dr. Adams. It is an excellent question. I do, in fact,
support that concept because I think it is important--and this
is what I was talking about earlier at the National Security
Council [NSC] and OMB [Office of Management and Budget] level--
it is important to have the White House taking a good look at
all of the instruments of statecraft in relationship to each
other. As somebody who spent five years as the associate
director at OMB for national security, I can tell you that that
did not happen. It was extraordinarily difficult to do at the
White House level. And there are two reasons why it is
difficult.
One is because there is no systematic way for those two
White House institutions, OMB and NSC, National Security Staff,
to actually formally interact with each other. So the
interaction between the two is handcrafted at the beginning of
every administration and then evolves over time. The National
Security Council Web site still says the OMB director is
invited as necessary to NSC principals' meetings. My view is
that is just totally absurd; that the people who are in charge
of the resources for the White House ought to be in every
meeting the National Security Council holds with respect to any
international crisis or international policy situation, because
resources and policy are intrinsically linked, and those are
the tools the White House can use to coordinate. So that is one
of the difficulties.
The other difficulty on the White House level is that
neither the National Security Council nor the Office of
Management and Budget have a strategic planning staff of any
consequence. That has been tried the last couple of
administrations and currently--to stand up a strategic planning
office at NSC. There is minimal capacity and not a staff really
trained to the art of strategic planning over the long term.
OMB, having served there for five years, I can tell you also
lacks that capacity. You work to an annual budget, a daily
calendar. The long-term is six months. So actually creating a
capacity in both organizations and a bridge between the two
that links them at the hip in every issue is an important part
for joining this.
Now the other piece that the White House can do, and I
don't believe this requires any particular congressional action
except agreement that it is a wise thing to do, is that when
the President's budget is transmitted to the Congress, it ought
to come with a single budget function for the security
institutions. That all of those institutions ought to be in one
budget function at the Budget Committee level. This would
minimally have the advantage of not leaving our foreign policy
and civilian funding at the mercy of a Budget Committee which
inherently will look for ways to cut and finds those particular
agencies----
Mrs. Davis. We certainly need to recognize how stovepiped
Congress is as well in that regard----
Dr. Adams. Correct.
Mrs. Davis [continuing]. So it is part of the problem, of
course, if you look at this issue. I was wondering if anybody
else would like to weigh in on this.
Dr. Adams. Just the other thought was, I think, along with
that document there ought to come a document to the Congress
which is a single security budget justification document that
links priorities and missions and capacities and tools. That
would have to emerge from a joint NSC-OMB process with the
agencies that would literally look at how these capacities
relate to each other and why one part supports capabilities and
requirements in the other part of the budget.
Mrs. Davis. Mr. Locher.
Mr. Locher. Congresswoman, the Project on National Security
Reform has recommended that there be an integrated national
security budget. I think that would be hugely important, and it
may have to be mandated by the Congress, requiring that the
President's budget in the national security area be presented
as an integrated budget. In my written testimony, I had
proposed a first step of asking the Director of OMB to submit
an integrated budget in two mission areas: in combating
terrorism and in foreign assistance. That would give a start to
this to be able to look across the entire departments and
agencies and for the Congress to look at what an integrated
budget might look like. But there is a tremendous amount that
needs to be done in terms of national security budgeting. There
is no guidance from the President down to the departments and
agencies for their planning or development of their budgets. He
ought to be able to articulate exactly what outcomes and
missions he would like them to focus on. So this is an area
that the Project has spent lots of time working on and hopes to
develop further.
Mrs. Davis. I think my time is up. Perhaps I will come back
to you afterwards. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Platts for five minutes.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly thank each
of our witnesses for your testimony, both written and oral, and
your insights. With the focus being jointness and better
coordination and collaboration, following the tragic events of
9/11 the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of
2004 did a number of things--the creation of the DNI [Director
for National Intelligence], the National Counterterrorism
Center. I would be interested in your perspectives of what has
worked or not worked with the National Counterterrorism Center
as an example of how we have tried to get the interagency
coordination focused on a specific threat, terrorist threat.
What shall we learn from this operation that is working or what
is not working that we should be very aware of in going forward
and trying to replicate this type of effort in a broader sense.
Mr. Locher, given I am in your county, I understand you are
a native of Lancaster next door, it is appropriate we allow you
to start.
Mr. Locher. Thank you, sir.
The Project on National Security Reform has studied a part
of the National Counterterrorism Center, the Directorate for
Strategic Operational Planning, and I think while we understand
that part of it best, the lessons there apply across all of the
National Counterterrorism Center.
In that directorate, there is not sufficient authority for
it to conduct its responsibilities. There is lots of ambiguity
with respect to the roles of other departments and agencies.
The President really needs to issue an executive order that
clarifies the responsibilities. Now that the National
Counterterrorism Center and the Directorate for Strategic
Operational Planning have been created, what is the
responsibility of the State Department compared to this, and
what is the responsibility of the Central Intelligence Agency
[CIA]?
We have the problem that often when the Directorate for
Strategic Operational Planning is doing its work, State and CIA
do not participate. 15 or 16 departments and agencies need to
play there.
We also have the challenge of personnel; how are people
recruited to go there from the departments and agencies? How
are they rewarded afterwards? I can tell you when it was
created, lots of people went there with enthusiasm because they
saw the opportunity that was presented by this organizational
innovation. And both NCTC and the Directorate for Strategic
Operational Planning are really organizational innovations, but
they were formed imperfectly by the Congress.
But as I was mentioning, people went out there for two-year
details from departments and agencies. The military really
rewarded the people that went there. My understanding is in
civilian departments and agencies, they did not. But this is an
area where we need a human capital system to give us the kinds
of skills that are required.
This directorate is really an extension of the National
Security Staff. The National Security Staff is way too busy to
be able to do strategy and to be able to do linking of
resources with strategy, to do planning. This work could be
done in subordinate organizations, such as the Directorate for
Strategic Operational Planning, but that institutional
relationship needs to be clarified, because it is now all
personality-dependent.
But the challenge the Congress had in the legislation was
to balance between the authority of a central figure, the
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center or the
Director of National Intelligence, and the continued
independence of the components, the 16 departments and agencies
who have intelligence capabilities or play in the combating
terrorism world.
In my view, the Congress did not find the right balance.
There needs to be some strengthening. But the first step could
be taken by the President through an executive order.
Mr. Platts. So the DNI having a more clear command and
authority over Navy personnel, or whoever is within that
center, no matter what agency they come from?
Mr. Locher. Well, in terms of this particular center, the
National Counterterrorism Center, the director there does not
have authority over personnel matters. He also has no authority
over budgeting. So his authority is somewhat limited. It is a
coalition of the willing, and every once in a while that
coalition can be put together, and when it is, it can produce
some powerful answers for the United States. But it is very
difficult to do, and because it is only a coalition, he has to
be very careful as to how he tries to exert any authority he
has.
Dr. Adams. Let me try to address this issue you raised, Mr.
Platts, from a different direction, but complementary, I think,
to what Jim Locher had to say.
The National Implementation Plan which emerged from the
division that Mr. Locher referred to is probably the most
ambitious exercise that we have studied at attempting to bring
a coordinated approach to strategy and guidance to agencies.
There has rarely been a more forward-thrusted interagency
deliberate and conscious and statutorily demanded exercise at
interagency coordination than the National Implementation Plan.
While an awful lot of that is classified, that was not an
unqualified success. Part of the reason that I think it was not
an unqualified success lies in part in some of the staffing
issues that Jim Locher referred to. Part of it lies in the
weaknesses that I was noting earlier in the White House, that
at the White House level National Security Staff and OMB, the
amount of time and commitment to the National Implementation
Plan was extremely thin, very small at the NSC level, with it
ending up being the Deputy National Security Adviser pushing
the effort forward, and NCTC was not an NSS agency so it had to
be done by an act of will. And OMB had two examiners dealing
with the budgetary consequences of the National Implementation
Plan, both of whom had full-time jobs, assignments to other
agencies that they were responsible for coordinating.
What that meant was you got a very elaborate plan with, as
I understand it, 500 or 600 different taskings to agencies to
coordinate counterterrorism policy across agencies, no capacity
at the National Security Council staff to follow through on
whether those were actually done, and no capacity at the Office
of Management and Budget in the White House to follow through
and find out if agencies had actually put resources behind the
tasking that had been handed to the agencies.
So the consequence of that, I think, was instructive as to
how difficult it is without adequate staffing and resourcing at
the White House level to make sure this followed through. NCTC,
in my judgment, was probably the wrong place to focus the
leadership of the effort because of that. It was just too
weakly backed up at the White House level.
Mr. Platts. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Platts.
We will go a second round here. I think we are going to
have votes sometime in the next 10 to 30 minutes or so. We will
try to get through another round before then.
Mr. Locher, in your statement you talked about the National
Security Advisor having a total staff of 230 people, and in
your words, a tiny budget of $8.6 million when General Jones
took over. You referred to it as, you say the National Security
Staff has become the most important staff in the national
security system, if not in the world, and you suggest, I think,
a substantial increase in staffing and authority and budget.
How do you resolve this question? We have had this
discussion before with Michelle Flournoy back when she was a
think-tanker, as to the National Security Advisor. Congress
doesn't have much oversight over the National Security Advisor.
That is the President's, I don't know if I want to say personal
advisor, but we can't call in the National Security Advisor and
say why did you spend that money there, why did you use this
person there, what did this person say to you? Let's see your
records.
So you are asking the Congress to substantially increase
the staff, authority, and scope of the job of the National
Security Advisor, when, in fact, we don't have any oversight
authority.
Comment on that issue, please.
Mr. Locher. Well, in our project, this was a major issue.
The President has an adviser. He is the Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs, but he is known as an
adviser because that is the limit of his role. We argue in the
project that what the President needs today is he needs a
national security manager, somebody who can make this system
decisive, integrated, focused on national missions and
outcomes; make it act quickly in an integrated fashion. We
think the position should exist in law. It does not now, but it
should exist in law, and have the Congress specify what the
duties of the position are.
If you think about it, there would have to be a
considerable discussion of whether this position should be
confirmed by the Senate. Our project did not come down and make
a decision on that issue, but it will have to be debated.
One of the things that we know is in today's world, it is a
whole-of-government approach, and we have argued that the
Congress needs the ability to take such an approach. It needs
to be able to work in more than the committee stovepipes. It
needs to be able to be up there at the level where it can
oversee the entire national security system. And there will
have to be some mechanism created in Congress to do that. We
proposed a Select Committee on National Security.
Dr. Snyder. I understand that issue. But I am talking
specifically about the issue of National Security Advisor.
Mr. Locher. The reason I raised this is because right now
the only person in the executive branch who can talk to the
Congress more broadly is the National Security Advisor. When
you hear from departmental secretaries or agency heads, you are
hearing it from their perspective.
There needs to be much more of a dialogue between the
National Security Advisor, whatever his title and position is,
and the Congress, because the really important issues today are
the issues that are out there in that interagency space, they
are issues that cut across. And there is currently no
opportunity for a dialogue because the National Security
Advisor is seen as only an assistant to the President and does
not appear before the Congress. This is an issue that will have
to be addressed. We may not have thought through all of the
dimensions of this issue, but it produces a void today.
Dr. Snyder. I agree with that. And it creates an issue of
let's suppose you go to it being a confirmable position that we
can call him up here to testify and have General Jones sitting
here, and then do you get into the line of authority issues
where essentially the Secretary of State reports to the
national security manager, who reports to the President, and
then you have, at some point, the President say I need a
confidential adviser; I can call in and have these discussions
and make my will known without having that person called before
the Congress, so I will have the national security assistant.
I don't know. I think that is how this all came about. I do
think it is an ongoing issue though, and it is one, I think,
that will need to be resolved if the Congress were to follow
the direction you suggest, which is a substantial increase in
budget and authority and staffing for the National Security
Advisor, because right now it is something we don't have the
ability to provide the kind of oversight I think most Members
of Congress would like to.
Mr. Pendleton. I would like to weigh in on it, if I could.
Dr. Snyder. Sure.
Mr. Pendleton. I would like to confirm your concern about
oversight. The NSS is pretty opaque to us at GAO. We
occasionally meet with the staff. They are very busy and pretty
small, and it is sometimes an issue. I have a job going on now
for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
looking at anti-piracy efforts, and we have been trying for
several months to get a meeting to talk to the NSS staff about
what they are doing to coordinate the efforts across the
government, and we never seem to get it scheduled.
So I think working through those oversight issues so we can
do our job for you, but also so the Congress can take a look at
what is happening there, would be very, very important.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to maybe
go from a little bit different direction on the question that
you asked, and we will go to Mr. Locher.
It seems to me the paradigms that a couple of agencies use
here differ. If you look at the Department of Defense, they
look at setting up regional commands and doing things on a
regional basis. Then you look at State Department, and the
State Department does them on a country-by-country basis. There
is a lot of discussion back and forth about which model is the
best, which one is most effective, which one is most inclusive
in trying to coordinate efforts across the spectrum.
How would you suggest resolving those differences? We have
such crossover today with these agencies that are dealing with
these issues and we see what is happening around the world,
Afghanistan with the provincial reconstruction teams [PRTs],
with the integration of different agencies there.
How do you resolve the differences between how DOD puts
their paradigm in place on that regional basis and the
Department of State that does it on a country-by-country basis?
Mr. Locher. Mr. Wittman, there is some good news in this
regard because in the House version of the National Defense
Authorization Act, there was a provision added on the floor, I
think by Congressman Langevin and Congresswoman Shea-Porter,
about a common map. It requires the President to do a study of
how we are organized differently in the departments and
agencies that have international responsibilities.
Right now, each department and agency has been able to
define the geographic boundaries to suit its needs, and in an
earlier era, that was fine. Today it is an integrated effort.
It is a whole-of-government approach. And if we allow those
boundaries to be different, it just creates more difficulty in
working the issues.
So I think this is a great provision. When General Jones
took over as the National Security Advisor, he indicated this
is one of the things he would like to see so that how he is
organized at the National Security Staff is also how the rest
of the government is organized.
So there is a great start on this. I am hoping that this
provision will remain, that this report will come from the
President explaining both the benefits of doing it plus any
downsides of organizing the same.
Dr. Adams. Could I address that question, Congressman, as
well? I like to make a distinction here between how you look at
the world in terms of policy and how you look at the world in
terms of execution or implementation.
At the level of policy and at the level of resourcing,
which I will combine together, if you will, with policy,
clearly the State Department is not adequately, how shall I
say, structured and empowered internally to deal at the
regional level the way it should, and that is a critical issue
at State.
My own of view of this, just to give you one example, is
the budget capacity that is in the hands of EUR/ACE [the Office
of the Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia],
which is the assistance office inside EUR, regional bureau at
State, is very capacitated, very empowered, to be a regionally
focused budget planning mechanism dealing with assistance to
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and has worked very
closely with the Congress. It has done a remarkable job. In
resourcing and planning terms, EUR is probably the best
practice at the State Department.
The falloff from that, even through NEA [the Bureau of Near
Eastern Affairs] and into the African Bureau or South Asia or
Southeast Asia or Pacific, is all considerable falloff. They
are not empowered to think policy at the regional level. They
are not empowered to think resources at the regional level,
unlike EUR/ACE, which is the outstanding example at the State
Department.
So in policy and resourcing terms, it makes a lot of sense,
even if you find the right way to draw the map, to empower
those offices in the State Department with capacities both for
policymaking and for resourcing budget decisions that they do
not now have.
It is different when you come to implementation. I am much
less concerned about whether there is a country focus or a
regional focus when it comes to moving forces, applying them in
the field, having diplomats and chiefs of mission responsible
in the implementation side on security assistance programs and
economic assistance programs. I think all of that, provided you
sufficiently empower the chief of mission authority at the
country level on the implementation side, works reasonably well
and can work reasonably well. But the policy/budgetary/
resourcing side at State Department needs to be more greatly
empowered and reinforced than it has been. None of them but
EUR/ACE have a budget office. None of them are looked to in the
policy sense.
The other caveat I would put on it is to be very careful in
the Defense Department-side model as well. It is not so clear
in policy terms that DOD policy is any more authoritative in
policy terms at the regional level than the regional bureaus at
State. We have a slight apples-and-oranges issue here, because
the DOD offices that look like they are active and good
implementers and policymakers are actually the COCOMs
[combatant commands], and COCOMs are not policymakers. They
behave like they are sometimes, but they are not, in fact,
policymakers. They are policy implementers.
So a close look I think needs to be taken at the COCOM
structure as well to make sure that they, as it were, stay in
their lane while policy and resource are on the civilian side
and equally empowered in both institutions.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis for five minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Dr. Thompson, perhaps you can enlighten us a little bit.
You studied the Intelligence Community and human capital
reforms over the last five years. So what did we specifically
learn from that that can be applied here and I guess really
that which cannot? I mean, looking at the obstacles. And in the
remaining time, probably there won't be much, one of the
concerns I have, and I am probably not going to get back to ask
this question, is how do we really translate this for the
American people?
We are struggling right now, we know that, in both Iraq and
Afghanistan, but particularly Afghanistan, in terms of trying
to establish and talk through the long-term efforts that are
necessary for progress. We are talking about human capital and
capacity building and all those kinds of things.
So how is it that we are able to talk through some of these
efforts in a way that makes sense, and perhaps people might
even want to support and not be frightened by in terms of a
long-term effort itself? Dr. Thompson?
Dr. Thompson. Well, our interest was primarily in the human
capital area, which is somewhat more narrow than some of these
other topics that have been discussed here. But some of the
same issues are the same.
For example, Mr. Locher mentioned the issue of the
authority of the DNI, which has figured centrally in the whole
effort by the Intelligence Community to deal with these human
capital reforms. And I mentioned the example earlier of the
issue of waivers, the joint duty certification, which is the
agencies collectively agree to a program whereby waivers could
only be granted by the DNI and the Under Secretary of Defense
for Intelligence.
However, that is simply in the form of an agreement, and
legally any agency head could, on his or her own, simply decide
to promote somebody to a senior position without joint duty
certification, which would kind of abrogate the treaty, and, to
a substantial extent, the program itself.
So I think the issue that Dr. Locher mentioned of providing
the DNI with some greater degree of authority over the agencies
would help. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but even an
incremental change in authority would substantially, how shall
we say it, put some teeth in the program that aren't there
right now.
It is remarkable--the program has achieved remarkable
success, given the lack of authority on the part of the DNI,
simply by virtue of the collaborative nature of the process
they have gone through. But I would describe the program as
somewhat at risk by virtue of this kind of lack of ability to
kind of weigh in in certain circumstances.
Plus the other thing, it has been highly contingent on
personalities, which is that the people that went to this
process all kind of bought in, but since then there has been a
lot of turnover at the agency head, at the DNI level, at the
chief human capital officer level, which has also kind of
destroyed some of the collective or collaborativeness that has
developed over time.
So I would describe the program as vulnerable and somewhat
at risk in that regard.
With regard to the broader question of how to communicate
this to the American people, it is not an item that I have
given a lot of thought to, so I would have to contemplate that
more.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Anybody else want to tackle that?
Dr. Adams. Let me take a crack at the communicating it to
the American people, but I am afraid it is going to underline
very much what Dr. Thompson had to say.
I look at this particularly with respect to our investment
in civilian capacity, as you gathered from my original
testimony and my comments. And while it is staggeringly easy to
communicate to the American people how much time and resources
and people and investment we should put in on the military side
of our national security structure, communicating successfully
about the time, level of effort, people, and resources that
need to be put on the civilian side has proven enormously
difficult.
Really I think it is a question of helping people
understand that the civilian long-term investment has as much,
if not more, payoff than the military investment that we are
making, because especially to pursue some of the reforms that
many of us have recommended, the investments that are being
made are in the capacity to strengthen governance in various
areas of the world that are of strategic concern to us.
That isn't going to happen via an AFRICOM or COCOM type of
arrangement. It is going to happen, and here a lot of the
problem is human resources, it is going to happen if we
recruit, train, cross-assign the way Mr. Locher is talking
about, incentivize, promote our civilian personnel, so they
are, in fact, empowered to do programmatic work and to focus on
this long-term governance issue.
We really have to focus the institutions. Getting the
American people to understand that that long-term investment is
in our security interests is the challenge that every Secretary
of State has had since the year ``zot'' in trying to justify
their budget request. That is the hard bridge to get over to
the American people. It is even a hard bridge to get over to
the Congress. Why should we put money here, when it is very
hard to see the near-term payoff?
Mrs. Davis. We work a little on short term.
I was going to ask, Mr. Pendleton, in your looking at the
right people and right jobs, would you agree? That is a big
problem, partly because it is more long-term rather than short-
term.
Mr. Pendleton. When we distilled all these reports, you
know, you put them in a thing and shake them and see what comes
out, it usually comes out to people in the long run.
I would like to just comment a bit and tell a little bit
more about the story of AFRICOM. I think it is telling.
Originally they hoped they would have a lot of
participation from State and AID, and it ended up being a
couple dozen, which is similar to what the other COCOMs have,
because DOD just absolutely dwarfs the other agencies. AFRICOM
is a year-and-a-half old. There are 4,300 people working for
them in Germany and Italy and down in Djibouti. I don't know
how many people State has in Africa, but that is a lot of folks
doing planning and thinking. So one of the things the national
security budget would do, for example, is bring that out in
pretty sharp relief. If you put DHS and State together, they
are about one-tenth the size of DOD, and that in itself is
telling.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Platts, last but not least.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just adding on to
Congresswoman Davis about people, you know, when I have
interacted out in Afghanistan and Iraq and examples of the
country teams with the ambassadors and being able to come into
any country and in a pretty good timeframe get a very good
sense of what is going on from that country team, it is very
effective, I guess. And then with PRTs, I have seen the same,
especially in Afghanistan in some of the early years in my
visits there.
But I think in all those instances, it was people and their
ability, kind of at the operations level just to say hey, we
have got a job to do, let's find a way to get it done, and they
make it work. When we get to the strategic level it gets more
and more tough to have that success.
With the people issue being one of the questions, and this
might be Mr. Pendleton and Dr. Thompson, it is my understanding
DNI is trying to promote interagency knowledge and cooperation,
and with this program, Civilian Joint Duty Program, how you see
that moving forward and I guess the effectiveness of it, and is
it something we should look to as a model elsewhere to try to
implement?
Dr. Thompson. The answer is yes, but a cautious yes, which
is the real crunch will come this October 1st when, according
to the program that they have agreed to, one cannot be promoted
to a senior level within the Intelligence Community without
joint duty certification. So if everybody adheres to that
agreement that they thus far have, then I think you can
describe the program as a success. But that is really going to
be crunch time within the Intelligence Community.
Mr. Platts. Where they actually back that up.
Dr. Thompson. Right. But to date, from everybody we have
talked to, I think the program is considered a substantial
success. All the agencies seem to have bought in. There is
active participation by the officers themselves. There is joint
leadership training programs just gearing up. So as of now, I
would describe it as a success.
Mr. Pendleton. Nothing to add.
Dr. Adams. Just one thought on that, Congressman. I would
say that probably one of the most revolutionary consequences of
Goldwater-Nichols for the Department of Defense has been
checking the joint box. That in order to move ahead, you have
to have done that.
I think over time, I don't know whether Jim would agree
with it, but I imagine he would, it has had revolutionary
impact on the way across services the senior officers now
respond to their responsibilities.
What could very easily be done in the Department of State
is to make a similar requirement for a foreign service officer
in the Department of State, that it is a requirement to have
done interagency duty as part of your promotional package. It
does not now exist, and it is my understanding of the Foreign
Service Act of 1980 that it is permissive, that the Department
itself could do that without the requirement for any
congressional action. Over time, I think it would have a
revolutionary impact similarly in the foreign service
structure.
Mr. Locher. I think the joint officer provisions of
Goldwater-Nichols have been a huge success. They have created
the right incentives. They have built the joint structure. You
can go out to a combatant command where you have people in five
different uniforms, and they are focused on what is the
national mission. We are lacking that in the interagency.
This committee last year took the initiative to require a
study of an interagency personnel system, a career development
and management, and that contract on that is going to be led by
the Department of Defense. The Project today submitted a
proposal on that, so we are hoping to do that. But that would
be a huge step.
In my testimony I recommended that this would be a near
term step that the Congress could take. It could have the same
dramatic changes by creating a different set of incentives for
people in the interagency space.
Mr. Platts. As one who has the privilege of representing
the Army War College and is up there a lot, and as we have had
tremendous hearings and the Chairman and Ranking Member's great
leadership on professional military education and that
jointness aspect of it, I certainly see when I am at the war
college, when it is not just Army officers, but Navy, Air
Force, Marine, civilian, Department of State, and then role-
playing for them in some of their strategic exercises, how that
joint approach, you know, is so important and ultimately
critical when they get out into the implementation of that
strategic leadership that they are developing.
Dr. Adams. I just did a presentation for one of the elite
units at Carlisle on the subject, and, of course, it is a
purposely impressive bunch of people. I have said many times
the State Department needs to look at this element of their
human resource development seriously.
The Foreign Service Institute [FSI] does a lot of great
work, but it does it at the entry level. It is insufficiently
interagency. They don't follow through at mid-career. They
really ought to be focusing right through a career and right
through an interagency approach to that career at FSI in the
training and education. State doesn't do it anywhere as well as
the Defense Department or the services do it.
Mr. Platts. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Mr. Locher, I had one quick question for you. In your
statement today, you say that there is no single sweeping
package that will be adopted and somehow we do reform once and
forever.
My recollection is when you came out with your 800-page
report a couple of years ago, that, in fact, you all did
advocate that there be very sweeping reform, I don't think you
said one sweeping package, but you did say you pretty much need
to take the whole package or don't do it.
Has this been kind of an evolution of your thinking in this
whole issue of reform with this national security system?
Mr. Locher. Well, Mr. Chairman, maybe we did not
communicate our intention well enough. When we did ``Forging a
New Shield,'' we were looking to study the entire system. Even
at that time we knew it would be a 10-year undertaking.
We had gotten smarter on the ideas of implementation over
the past year as we have worked with 10 or 12 agencies, and we
have gotten a sense of how gradual the changes will have to be.
And that is why I proposed this idea of a roadmap that gave us
a sense of the sequencing of actions.
Now, we do see that at some point in time, the Congress
will need to pass a new National Security Act. We have started
by trying to identify to the administration what can be done
under existing authority, and a tremendous amount can be done
under existing authority. But at some point in time, we are
going to identify authority that the President does not
currently have to operate in the new ways that the challenges
of today and tomorrow will demand.
So, in my testimony, I also talk about this roadmap which
showed the path to legislation. But our 800-page report did not
suggest that all of that would occur at one time. We understood
that maybe we were not successful in communicating it.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman, any further questions?
Mrs. Davis, anything further?
Mr. Platts, anything further?
Thank you all for being here. I don't think we have solved
the problem today, but I think the job this subcommittee has
played in the last two or three years is to keep reminding us
all that there is a problem out there that needs to be
scratched at, and your all's work today and in the past and the
future is part of that discussion. Thank you all.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
June 9, 2010
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June 9, 2010
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