18 October 2002
CIA Chief Says Al-Qa'ida Poses Serious Threat to the United States
(Future attacks will be multi-regional, he says) (11450)
CIA Director George Tenet says the grave threat currently posed by the
international terrorist network al-Qa'ida against the United States
and other nations is very real and very similar to the period just
before September 11, 2001.
"The threat environment we find ourselves in today is as bad as it was
last summer -- the summer before 9/11 [September 11, 2001]," Tenet
said during testimony October 17 at a joint House-Senate intelligence
committee hearing into the performance of the U.S. intelligence
community before the terrorist attacks last year. The hearings
followed weeks of closed hearings by the House and Senate intelligence
committees, and was the first opportunity for Tenet, who heads of the
nation's intelligence community, to speak publicly.
"It's serious, they have reconstituted. They are coming after us. They
want to execute attacks. We've seen it in Bali, we've seen it in
Kuwait."
Tenet said al-Qa'ida plans its operations in multiple theaters and
they are planning to strike in the United States again. He also warned
the lawmakers that the United States had "better get about the
business of getting the right structure in place as fast as we can" to
combat another attack al-Qa'ida might launch.
"When you see the multiple attacks that you've seen occur around the
world -- Bali, Kuwait, the number of failed attacks that have been
attempted, the various messages that have been issued by senior
al-Qa'ida leaders," Tenet said, "you must make the assumption that
al-Qa'ida is in an execution phase, and attempts to strike us here and
overseas."
Such terrorist activity is unambiguous, he said.
For the intelligence community and the United States, Tenet said, it
is imperative to build the intelligence infrastructure, "and bring as
many people to the fight as you possibly can around the world to
augment your own numbers. And keep your eye focused on the target."
The CIA director said he currently has 900 personnel assigned to the
CIA's Counter-terrorist Center (CTC), but conceded that is not enough.
"What we need to keep calibrating is how much more can we do to do
everything we know how to do to stop the next attack," he said.
Tenet, in his prepared remarks, outlined in detail the history of the
intelligence community's pursuit of Usama Bin Ladin and his
transnational al-Qa'ida network. He noted that:
-- Bin Ladin first came to the attention of the CIA as an emerging
terrorist threat during his stay in Sudan from 1991 to 1996.
-- al-Qa'ida in May 1993 financed the travel of more than 300 Afghan
war veterans to Sudan after the Pakistani government cracked down on
foreign Islamic extremists based in Pakistan.
-- by January 1994, al-Qa'ida began financing at least three terrorist
training camps in northern Sudan.
-- Bin Ladin financed extremists who, in December 1992, bombed a hotel
housing U.S. servicemen in Aden, Yemen.
-- Bin Ladin sent al-Qa'ida network members to Somalia in 1993 to work
as advisors with Somali warlord Aideed in opposing U.S. forces sent
there to support Operation Restore Hope.
-- al-Qa'ida issued a "fatwa" in February 1998 stating that all
Muslims had a religious duty "to kill Americans and their allies, both
civilian and military" worldwide.
-- al-Qa'ida launched bombings at two U.S. embassies in East Africa in
August 1998, and followed that with an attack on the Navy destroyer
USS Cole in October 2000, which killed 17 military personnel.
Following are abbreviations used in the text:
-- CIA: Central Intelligence Agency
-- CTC: Counterterrorist Center
-- DOD: Department of Defense
-- NSA: National Security Agency
-- FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation
-- NIMA: National Imagery and Mapping Agency
-- UBL: Usama Bin Ladin
-- FY: fiscal year
-- HUMINT: human intelligence
-- FISA: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
-- INS: Immigration and Naturalization Service
-- FAA: Federal Aviation Administration
-- Billion: equals 1,000 million
Following is the text of Tenet's remarks, as delivered:
(begin text)
Written Statement for the Record of the
Director of Central Intelligence
Before the
Joint Inquiry Committee
17 October 2002
I welcome the opportunity to be here today and to be part of an
inquiry that is vital to all Americans. On September 11th, nearly
3,000innocent lives were taken in brutal acts of terror. For the men
and women of American Intelligence, the grief we feel -- the grief we
share with so many others -- is only deepened by the knowledge of how
hard we tried -- without success -- to prevent this attack.
It is important for the American people to understand what CIA and the
Intelligence Community were doing to try to prevent the attack that
occurred -- and to stop attacks, which al-Qa'ida has certainly planned
and remains determined to attempt.
What I want to do this morning, as explicitly as I can, is to describe
the war we have waged for years against al-Qa'ida -- the level of
effort, the planning, the focus, and the enormous courage and
discipline shown by our officers throughout the world. It is important
for the American people to understand how knowledge of the enemy
translated into action around the globe -- including the terrorist
sanctuary of Afghanistan -- before September 11.
It is important to put our level of effort into context ...to
understand the tradeoffs in resources and people, we had to make --
the choices we consciously made to ensure that we maintained an
aggressive counterterrorist effort.
We need to understand that in the field of intelligence, long-term
erosions of resources cannot be undone quickly when emergencies arise.
And we need to explain the difference that sustained investments in
intelligence -- particularly in people -- will mean for our country's
future.
We need to be honest about the fact that our homeland is very
difficult to protect. For strategic warning to be effective, there
must be a dedicated program to address the vulnerabilities of our free
and open society. Successive administrations, commissions, and the
Congress have struggled with this.
To me, it is not a question of surrendering liberty for security, but
of finding a formula that gives us the security we need to defend the
liberty we treasure. Not simply to defend it in time of peace, but to
preserve it in time of war -- a war in which we must be ready to play
offense and defense simultaneously. That is why we must arrive -- soon
-- at a national consensus on Homeland Security.
We need to be honest about our shortcomings, and tell you what we have
done to improve our performance in the future. There have been
thousands of actions in this war -- an intensely human endeavor -- not
all of which were executed flawlessly. We made mistakes.
Nevertheless, the record will show a keen awareness of the threat, a
disciplined focus, and persistent efforts to track, disrupt,
apprehend, and ultimately bring to justice Bin Ladin and his
lieutenants.
Somehow lost in much of the debate since September 11 is one
unassailable fact: The U.S. intelligence community could not have
surged, as it has in the conflict in Afghanistan, and engaged in an
unprecedented level of operations around the world, if it was as mired
as some have portrayed.
It is important for the American people to know that, despite the
enormous successes we have had in the past year -- indeed over many
years -- al-Qa'ida continues to plan and will attempt more deadly
strikes against us. There will be more battles won and, sadly, more
battles lost. We must be honest about that, too.
Finally, we need to focus on the future, and consider how the
knowledge we have gained in this war will be applied.
These are some of the themes that I hope you will reflect on as you
listen to this testimony today.
Let me begin by describing the rise of Usama Bin Ladin and the
Intelligence Community's Response.
-- We recognized early on the threat posed by Usama Bin Ladin and his
supporters.
-- As that threat developed, we tracked it and we reported it to
Executive Branch policymakers, Congress, and, when feasible, directly
to the American people.
-- We reacted to the growing threat by conducting energetic,
innovative, and increasingly risky operations to combat it. We went on
the offensive.
-- And this effort mattered. It saved lives -- perhaps in the
thousands. And it prepared the field for the rapid successes in
Afghanistan last winter.
The Early Years: Terrorist Financier (1986-1996)
The first rule of warfare is "know your enemy." My statement documents
our knowledge and analysis of Bin Ladin, from his early years as a
terrorist financier to his leadership of a worldwide network of
terrorism based in Afghanistan.
Bin Ladin gained prominence during the Afghan war for his role in
financing the recruitment, transportation, and training of Arab
nationals who fought alongside the Afghan Mujahedin against the
Soviets during the 1980s.
-- While we knew of him, we have no record of any direct U.S.
government contact with Bin Ladin at that time.
-- Bin Ladin came to the attention of the CIA as an emerging terrorist
threat during his stay in Sudan from 1991 to 1996.
CIA reported that during Bin Ladin's five-year residence in Sudan he
combined business with jihad under the umbrella of al-Qa'ida.
-- In May 1993, for example, al-Qa'ida financed the travel of more
than 300 Afghan war veterans to Sudan after the Pakistani government
launched a crackdown against foreign Islamic extremists based in
Pakistan.
-- By January 1994, al-Qa'ida had begun financing at least three
terrorist training camps in northern Sudan. Among the trainers were
Egyptian, Algerian, Tunisian, and Palestinian extremists.
-- Islamic extremists, who in December 1992 bombed a hotel housing
U.S. servicemen in Aden, Yemen, said Bin Ladin financed their group.
-- We learned in 1996 that Bin Ladin sent members to Somalia in 1993
to work as advisors with Somali warlord Aideed in opposing U.S. forces
sent there in support of Operation Restore Hope. Bin Ladin later
publicly claimed responsibility for this activity, and CIA has
confirmed his involvement in Somalia.
-- After Bin Ladin had left Sudan we learned that al-Qa'ida had
attempted to acquire material used in pursuing a chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear (CBRN) capability and had hired a Middle Eastern
physicist to work on nuclear and chemical projects in Sudan.
As Bin Ladin's prominence grew in the early 1990s, it became clear to
CIA that it was not enough simply to collect and report intelligence
about him.
-- As early as 1993, our units watching him began to propose action to
reduce his organization's capabilities.
I must pause here. In an open forum I cannot describe what authorities
we sought or received. But it is important that the American people
understand two things.
-- The first is about covert action in general: CIA can only pursue
such activities with the express authorization of the President.
-- The second point is that, when such proposals are considered, it is
always because we or policymakers identify a threatening situation, a
situation to which we must pay far more attention and one in which we
must run far greater risks. As long ago as 1993, we saw such a
situation with Usama Bin Ladin.
By the time Bin Ladin left Sudan in 1996 and relocated himself and his
terror network to Afghanistan, the Intelligence Community was taking
strong action to stop him.
-- We established a special unit -- known as the Bin Ladin Issue
Station -- with CIA, NSA, FBI and other officers specifically to get
more -- and more actionable -- intelligence on Bin Ladin and his
organization. We took this step because we knew that traditional
approaches alone would not be enough for this target.
-- We monitored his whereabouts and increased our knowledge about him
and his organization with information from our own assets and from
many foreign intelligence services.
-- We were working hard on an aggressive program to disrupt his
finances, degrade his ability to engage in terrorism, and, ultimately,
to bring him to justice.
We must remember that, despite this heightened attention, Bin Ladin
was in the mid 1990s only one of four areas of concentration within
our Counter-Terrorist Center, CTC.
-- In addition to the Bin Ladin Issue Station, we had a group working
against Hizballah; a group working Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Gama'at,
and Palestinian rejectionists; and a group working on an assortment of
smaller terrorist groups, such as Shining Path in Peru, Abu Sayyaf in
the Philippines, and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka.
Taliban Sanctuary Years: Becoming a Strategic Threat
Beginning in January 1996, we began to receive reports that Bin Ladin
planned to move from Sudan. Confirming these reports was especially
difficult because of the closure in February of the U.S. Embassy as
well as the CIA station in Khartoum for security reasons.
-- We have read the allegations that, around this time, the Sudanese
government offered to surrender Bin Ladin to American custody.
-- Mr. Chairman, CIA has no knowledge of such an offer.
Later in 1996, it became clear that he had moved to Afghanistan. From
that safe haven, he defined himself publicly as a threat to the United
States. In a series of declarations, he made clear his hatred for
Americans and all we represent.
-- In July 1996, Bin Ladin described the killing of Americans in the
Khobar
Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in June 1996 as the beginning of a war
between Muslims and the United States.
-- One month later, in August 1996, Bin Ladin issued a religious edict
or fatwa entitled "Declaration of War," authorizing attacks against
Western military targets on the Arabian Peninsula.
-- In February 1998, six months prior to the U.S. Embassy bombings in
East Africa, al-Qa'ida -- under the banner of the "World Islamic Front
for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders" -- issued another fatwa stating
that all Muslims have a religious duty "to kill Americans and their
allies, both civilian and military" worldwide.
By the time of the 1998 East Africa bombings, al-Qa'ida had
established its intention to inflict mass casualties and a modus
operandi emphasizing careful planning and exhaustive field
preparations, which Bin Ladin saw as a prerequisite for the type of
spectacular operations he had in mind.
-- For example, when asked in a November 1996 interview why his
organization had not yet conducted attacks in response to its August
fatwa statement, Bin Ladin replied, "If we wanted to carry out small
operations, it would have been easy to do so after the statements, but
the nature of the battle requires qualitative operations that affect
the adversary, which obviously requires good preparation."
The East Africa bombings in August 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole
in October 2000 succeeded because of al-Qa'ida's meticulous
preparation and effective security practices.
-- CIA analysts looked at captured al-Qa'ida targeting studies and
training materials around the time of the East Africa and USS Cole
attacks. They published an in-depth intelligence study of al-Qa'ida's
terrorist operations that revealed that much of the terrorists'
advance planning involved careful, patient, and meticulous
preparation.
Beyond the conventional threat, we were also becoming increasingly
concerned and therefore stepped up our warning -- about al-Qa'ida's
interest in acquiring unconventional weapons, not only chemical or
biological elements, but nuclear materials as well.
-- In a December 1998 interview, Bin Ladin called the acquisition of
these weapons a "religious duty" and noted, "How we would use them is
up to us."
-- We reported in 1998 that an extremist associated with al-Qa'ida
said Bin Ladin was seeking a "Hiroshima."
-- As early as July 1993, in testimony to the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, DCI [Director of Central Intelligence James] Woolsey warned
of the Intelligence Community's heightened sensitivity to the prospect
that a terrorist incident could involve weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). In February 1996, in testimony to the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, DCI Deutch expressed his concern about the growing
lethality, sophistication, and wide-ranging nature of the terrorist
threat, and that terrorists would push this trend to its most "awful
extreme by employing weapons of mass destruction." I made similar
warnings to these committees as early as 1998, when I pointed to Bin
Ladin's attempts to purchase or manufacture biological and chemical
weapons for an attack against U.S. facilities.
-- CIA analysts published two in-depth assessments on al-Qa'ida's CBRN
capabilities in 1999.
The terrorist plotting, planning, recruiting, and training that Bin
Ladin and al-Qa'ida did in the late 1990s were aided immeasurably by
the sanctuary the Taliban provided.
-- Afghanistan had served as a place of refuge for international
terrorists since the 1980s. The Taliban actively aided Bin Ladin by
assigning him guards for security, permitting him to build and
maintain terrorist camps, and refusing to cooperate with efforts by
the international community to extradite him.
-- In return, Bin Ladin invested vast amounts of money in Taliban
projects and provided hundreds of well-trained fighters to help the
Taliban consolidate and expand their control of the country.
-- While we often talk of two trends in terrorism -- state-supported
and independent -- in Bin Ladin's case with the Taliban we had
something completely new: a terrorist sponsoring a state.
Afghanistan provided Bin Ladin a relatively safe operating environment
to oversee his organization's worldwide terrorist activities.
-- Militants who received training there were sent afterwards to fight
in jihads in Kashmir, Chechnya, or Bosnia.
-- The al-Qa'ida/Taliban training camps formed the foundation of a
worldwide network by sponsoring and encouraging Islamic extremists
from diverse locations to forge longstanding ideological, logistical,
and personal ties.
-- Extremists in the larger camps received basic training in the use
of small arms and guerrilla tactics. In the smaller camps, militants
received more advanced and specialized training in subjects like
explosives, poisons, and assassination techniques.
-- Clandestine and counterintelligence tradecraft courses included
basic instruction on how to establish secure, cell-based, clandestine
organizations to support insurgencies or terrorist operations.
-- Indoctrination in extremist religious ideas was emphasized and
included the repetition of ideas that the United States is evil, and
that the regimes of Arab countries are not true believers in Islam and
should be overthrown as a religious duty.
-- Some of the Afghan camps provided the militants instruction in the
production and use of toxic chemicals and biological toxins.
In summary, what Bin Ladin created in Afghanistan after he relocated
there in 1996 was a sophisticated adversary -- as good as any that CIA
has ever operated against.
Going to War against al-Qa'ida -- "The Plan"
As the Intelligence Community improved its understanding of the
threat, and as the threat grew, we refocused and intensified our
efforts to track, disrupt, and bring the terrorists to justice.
By 1998, the key elements of the CIA's strategy against Bin Ladin and
al-Qa'ida -- inside Afghanistan and globally -- placed us in a
strongly offensive posture. They included:
-- Hitting al-Qa'ida's infrastructure;
-- Working with foreign security services to carry out arrests;
-- Disrupting and weakening UBL's businesses and finances;
-- Recruiting or exposing operatives; and
-- Pursuing a multi-track approach to bring Bin Ladin himself to
justice, including working with foreign services, developing a close
relationship with U.S. federal prosecutors, increasing pressure on the
Taliban, and enhancing our capability to capture him.
CIA's policy-and-objectives statement for the FY 1998 budget
submission to Congress -- which was prepared in early 1997 -- reflects
this determination to go on the offensive against terrorism.
-- The submission outlined our Counter-terrorist Center's (CTC's)
offensive operations, listing as their goals to "render the
masterminds, disrupt terrorist infrastructure, infiltrate terrorist
groups, and work with foreign partners."
-- It highlighted efforts to work with the FBI in a bold program to
destroy the infrastructure of major terrorist groups worldwide.
-- The FY 1999 submission -- prepared in early 1998 -- continued the
trend in requesting a substantial funding increase for offensive
operations against terrorism.
-- The FY 2000 budget submission prepared in early 1999 described Bin
Ladin as "the most significant individual sponsor of Sunni Islamic
extremist and terrorist activity in the world today." Our FY 2000
submission noted our use of a wide range of operational techniques,
joint operations with foreign partners, and the recruitment of
well-placed agents.
-- Commenting on the Bin Ladin-dedicated Issue Station in CTC, the FY
2000 submission noted that, "This Station, staffed with CIA, FBI, DOD,
and NSA officers, has succeeded in identifying assets and members of
Bin Ladin's organization, and nearly 700 intelligence reports have
been disseminated about his operations."
Despite these clear intentions, and the daring activities that went
with them, I was not satisfied that we were doing all we could against
this target. In 1998, I told key leaders at CIA and across the
Intelligence Community that we should consider ourselves "at war" with
Usama Bin Ladin. I ordered that no effort or resource be spared in
prosecuting this war. In early 1999, 1 ordered a baseline review of
CIA's operational strategy against Bin Ladin.
In spring 1999, CTC produced a new comprehensive operational plan of
attack against the Bin Ladin/al-Qa'ida target inside and outside
Afghanistan.
-- This new strategy was previewed to senior CIA management by the end
of July 1999. By mid-September, it had been briefed to CIA operational
level personnel, and to NSA, the FBI, and other partners.
-- CIA then began to put in place the elements of this operational
strategy, which structured the Agency's counterterrorist activity
until September 11th, 2001.
This strategy -- which we called "The Plan" -- built on what CTC was
recognized as doing well-collection, quick reaction to operational
opportunities, renditions, disruptions, and analysis. Its priority was
plain: to capture and bring to justice Bin Ladin and his principal
lieutenants.
-- The Plan included a strong and focused intelligence collection
program to track -- and then act against -- Bin Ladin and his
associates in terrorist sanctuaries. It was a blend of aggressive
human source collection -- both unilateral and with foreign partners
-- and technical collection.
-- To execute the Plan, CTC developed a program to select and train
the right officers and put them in the right places. We moved talented
and experienced officers into the Center. We also initiated a
nationwide program to identify, vet and hire qualified personnel for
counterterrorist assignments in hostile environments. We sought native
fluency in the languages of the Middle East and South Asia, combined
with police, military, business, technical, or academic experience. In
addition, we established an eight-week advanced Counterterrorist
Operations Course to share the tradecraft we had developed and refined
over the years.
The parts of "the Plan" focused on Afghanistan faced some daunting
impediments (some of which would change after 9/11). For example:
-- The U.S. government had no official presence in Afghanistan, and
relations with the Taliban were seriously strained. Both factors made
it more difficult to gain access to Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida personnel.
-- U.S. policy stopped short of replacing the Taliban regime, limiting
the ability of the U.S. government to exert pressure on Bin Ladin.
-- U.S. relations with Pakistan, the principal access point to
Afghanistan, were strained by the Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998 and
the military coup in 1999.
Collection Profile
Despite these facts, our surge in collection operations paid off.
-- Our human intelligence (HUMINT) reporting on the difficult Bin
Ladin/al-Qa'ida target increased from roughly 600 reports in 1998 to
900 reports in the first nine months of 2001.
-- Our HUMINT sources against the terrorism target grew by more than
50 percent between 1999 and 9/11.
-- Working across agencies, and in some cases with foreign
(intelligence) services, we designed and built several collection
systems for specific use against al Qa'ida inside Afghanistan.
-- By 9/11, a map would show that these collection programs and human
networks were in place in such numbers to nearly cover Afghanistan.
This array meant that, when the military campaign to topple the
Taliban and destroy al-Qa'ida began last October, we were able to
support it with an enormous body of information and a large stable of
assets.
The realm of human source collection frequently is divided between
"liaison reporting" (that which we get from cooperative foreign
intelligence services) and "unilateral reporting" (that which we get
from agents we run ourselves). Even before "the Plan," our vision for
HUMINT on terrorism was simple: we had to get more of both types. The
figures for both rose every year after 1998. And in 1999, for the
first time, the volume of reporting on terrorism from unilateral
assets exceeded that from liaison sources -- a trend which has
continued in subsequent years.
The integration of technical and human sources has been key to our
understanding of and our actions against -- international terrorism.
It was this combination -- this integration -- that allowed us years
ago to confirm the existence of numerous al-Qa'ida facilities and
training camps in Afghanistan.
-- On a virtually daily basis, analysts and collection officers from
NSA, NIMA, and CIA came together to interactively employ satellite
imagery, communications information, and human source reporting.
-- This integration also supported military targeting operations prior
to September 11, including the cruise missile attack against the
al-Qa'ida training camp complex in northeastern Afghanistan in August
1998. In addition, it helped to provide baseline data for the U.S.
Central Command's target planning against al-Qa'ida facilities and
infrastructure throughout Afghanistan.
Countering al-Qa'ida's Global Presence
Even while targeting UBL and al-Qa'ida in their Afghan lair, we did
not ignore its cells of terror spread across the globe. Especially in
periods of peak threat reporting, we accelerated our work to shake up
and destroy al-Qa'ida cells wherever we could find them.
-- This took resources -- operations officers, desk officers,
analysts, translators -- throughout the Intelligence Community and law
enforcement agencies.
-- We also mobilized intelligence services around the globe.
By 1999, the intensive nature of our operations was disrupting
elements of Bin Ladin's international infrastructure. We believe that
our efforts dispelled al-Qa'ida's impression that it could organize
and operate with impunity. Our operations sent the message that the
United States was not only going after al-Qa'ida for crimes it had
committed, but also was actively seeking out and pursuing terrorists
from al-Qa'ida and other groups engaged in planning future attacks
whenever and wherever we could find them.
-- By 11 September, CIA (in many cases with the FBI) had rendered 70
terrorists to justice around the world.
During the Millennium threat period, we told senior policymakers to
expect between five and 15 attacks, both here and overseas. The CIA
overseas and the FBI in the U.S. organized an aggressive, integrated
campaign to disrupt al-Qaida using human assets, technical operations,
and the hand-off of foreign intelligence to facilitate FISA court
warrants.
Over a period of months, there was close, daily consultation that
included Director Freeh, the National Security Adviser, and the
Attorney General. We identified 36 additional terrorist agents at the
time around the world. We pursued operations against them in 50
countries. Our disruption activities succeeded against 21 of these
individuals, and included arrests, renditions, detentions,
surveillance, and direct approaches.
-- We assisted the Jordanian government in dealing with terrorist
cells that planned to attack religious sites and tourist hotels. We
helped track down the organizers of these attacks and helped render
them to justice.
-- We mounted disruption and arrest operations against terrorists in
eight countries on four continents, which also netted information that
allowed us to track down even more suspected terrorists.
-- During this same period, unrelated to the Millennium threats, we
conducted multiple operations in East Asia, leading to the arrest or
detention of 45 members of the Hizballah network.
-- In the months after the Millennium experience -- in October 2000 --
we lost a serious battle, when USS Cole was bombed and 17 brave
American sailors perished.
The efforts of American intelligence to strike back at a deadly enemy
continued through the Ramadan period in the winter of 2000, another
phase of peak threat reporting.
-- Terrorist cells planning attacks against U.S. and foreign military
and civilian targets in the Persian Gulf region were broken up,
capturing hundreds of pounds of explosives and other weapons --
including anti-aircraft missiles. These operations also netted proof
that some Islamic charitable organizations had been either hijacked or
created to provide support to terrorists operating in other countries.
-- We succeeded in bringing a major Bin Ladin terrorist facilitator to
justice with the cooperation of two foreign governments. This
individual had provided documents and shelter to terrorists traveling
through the Arabian Peninsula.
-- We worked with numerous European governments, such as the Italians,
Germans, French, and British to identify and shatter terrorist groups
and plans against American and local interests in Europe.
Fusion and Sharing -- the Intelligence Community and Law Enforcement
Taking the fight to Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida was not just a matter of
mobilizing CTC, or even CIA. This was an interagency -- and
international-effort. Two things which are critical to this effort
are: fusion and sharing.
-- The Counter-terrorist Center (CTC) at CIA was created in 1986 to
enable the fusion of all sources of information in a single,
action-oriented unit. Not only do we fuse every source of reporting on
terrorists from U.S. and foreign collectors, we also fuse analysis and
operations. This fusion gives us the speed that we must have to seize
fleeting opportunities in the shadowy world of terrorism. Based on
this proven philosophy, by 2001 the Center had more than 30 officers
from more than a dozen agencies on board, 10 percent of its staff
complement at that time.
-- No matter how much is fused within CTC, no matter how large CTC may
be, there are still key counterterrorist players outside it, making
the sharing of knowledge essential. Interview anyone in CTC, and he or
she will likely tell you of work they are doing with counterparts
across CIA especially in the field -- or with NSA, NIMA, FBI, or today
with a Special Forces unit in Kandahar or Bagram.
It is also clear that, when errors occur -- when we miss information
or opportunities -- it is often because our sharing and fusion are not
as strong as they need to be. Communication across bureaucracies,
missions, and cultures is among our most persistent challenges in the
fast paced, high-pressure environment of counterterrorism. I will
return to this issue later in my testimony when I present some
prescriptions for the future.
One of the most critical alliances in the war against terrorism is
that between CIA and FBI. This alliance in the last few years has
produced achievements that simply would not have been possible if some
of the recent media stories of all-out feuding were true.
-- An FBI officer has been serving as deputy to the Chief of CTC since
the mid-1990s, and FBI reciprocated by making a CIA officer deputy in
the Bureau's Counter-Terrorist Division.
-- In the Bin Ladin Issue Station itself, FBI officers were detailed
there soon
after it opened in 1996, with the presence growing to four officers by
September 2001.
There are abundant examples of close FBI-CIA partnership in
counterterrorism.
-- After the first World Trade Center bombing, FBI headed the
investigation and CTC created an interagency task force to develop
intelligence leads for the FBI. At FBI request, CIA obtained
intelligence from a foreign service on Ramzi Yousef, who subsequently
was convicted for the attack.
-- After we received a rash of reports in 1998 threatening attacks in
the United States, CIA worked together with FBI to provide advisories
for local law enforcement agencies. One such episode occurred when CIA
provided reporting of a plot to hijack a plane on the east coast of
the United States to attempt to free the "Blind Shaykh" from prison.
The report also said that there had been a successful test to elude
security at a major airport.
-- Also in 1998, FBI and CIA worked closely in the wake of the East
Africa bombings to disrupt a planned attack on another U.S. Embassy in
Africa. In a three-day period, more than 20 al-Qa'ida operatives were
arrested in that country.
Of course, the relationship is not perfect, and frictions occasionally
arise. A 1994 CIA Inspector General report noted that interactions
between the two organizations were too personality dependent. This has
been particularly so when the two were pursuing different missions in
the same case: FBI trying to develop a case for courtroom prosecution,
and CIA trying to develop intelligence to assess and counter a threat.
-- In 2001 (before 9/11), the CIA IG (Inspector General) found
significant improvement, citing, for example, the Center's assistance
to the FBI in two dozen renditions in 1999-2000.
-- Director Freeh and I worked on this very hard. We had quarterly
meetings of our senior leadership teams. Through training and other
means, coordination between our Chiefs of Station overseas and legal
attaches was significantly improved. Today, Bob Mueller and I are
working to deepen our cooperation, not only at headquarters, but in
the field. We both understand that despite different missions and
cultures, we need to build a system of seamless cooperation that is
institutionalized.
Increasing the difficulty of interagency communications is an
unfortunate phenomenon known as "the Wall." It has been mentioned
before in these hearings -- the complex system of laws and rules (and
perceptions about them) that impede the flow of information between
the arenas of intelligence and criminal prosecution. The "Wall" slows
and sometimes stops the flow of information -- something we simply
cannot afford. The Patriot Act has helped alleviate this.
Run up to 9/11 -- Our Operations
The third period of peak threat was in the spring and summer 2001. As
with the Millennium and Ramadan 2000, we increased the tempo of our
operations against al-Qa'ida. We stopped some attacks and caused the
terrorists to postpone others.
-- We helped to break up another terrorist cell in Jordan and seized a
large quantity of weapons, including rockets and high explosives.
-- Working with another foreign partner, we broke up a plan to attack
U.S. facilities in Yemen.
-- In June, CIA worked with a Middle Eastern partner to arrest two Bin
Ladin operatives planning attacks on U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia.
-- In June and July, CIA launched a wide-ranging disruption effort
against Bin Ladin's organization, with targets in almost two-dozen
countries. Our intent was to drive up Bin Ladin's security concerns
and lead his organization to delay or cancel its attacks. We
subsequently received reporting that attacks were delayed, including
an attack against the U.S. military in Europe.
-- In July, a different Middle East partner helped bring about the
detention of a terrorist who had been directed to begin an operation
to attack the U.S. Embassy or cultural center in European capital.
-- Also in the summer of 2001, local authorities, acting on our
information, arrested an operative described as Bin Ladin's man in
East Asia.
-- We assisted another foreign partner in the rendition of a senior
Bin Ladin associate. Information he provided included plans to kidnap
Americans in three countries, and carry out hijackings.
-- We provided intelligence to a Latin American service on a band of
terrorists considering hijackings and bombings. An FBI team detected
explosives residue in their hotel rooms.
Run up to 9/I1 -- the Watchlist Issue
During the period of the Millennium threats, one of our operations,
and one of our mistakes, occurred during our accelerating efforts
against Bin Ladin's organization when we glimpsed two of the
individuals who later became 9/11 hijackers, Halide al-Midair and Napa
al-Hemi.
-- In December 1999, CIA, FBI, and the Department of State received
intelligence on the travels of suspected al-Qa'ida operatives to Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia. CIA saw the Kuala Lumpur gathering as a potential
source of intelligence about a possible al-Qa'ida attack in Southeast
Asia.
We initiated an operation to learn why those suspected terrorists were
traveling to Kuala Lumpur. Halide and Napa were among those travelers,
although at the time we knew nothing more about them except that
Halide had been at a suspected al-Qa'ida logistics facility in Yemen.
We arranged to have them surveilled.
-- In early January 2000, we managed to obtain a photocopy of
al-Mihdhar's passport as he traveled to Kuala Lumpur. It showed a U.S.
multiple-entry visa issued in Jeddah on 7 April 1999 and expiring on 6
April 2000. We learned that his full name is Khalid bin Muhammad bin
Abdallah al-Mihdhar.
-- We had at that point the level of detail needed to watchlist him --
that is, to nominate him to State Department for refusal of entry into
the U.S. or to deny him another visa. Our officers remained focused on
the surveillance operation, and did not do this.
At this early stage, the first days of January 2000, CIA briefed the
FBI, informally, about the surveillance operation in Kuala Lumpur. We
noted in an internal CIA communication on 5 January 2000 that we had
passed a copy of al-Mihdhar's passport -- with its U.S. visa -- to the
FBI for further investigation. A CTC officer at the FBI wrote an
e-mail in January 2000 reporting that he briefed FBI officers on the
surveillance operation, noting suspicious activity but no evidence of
an impending attack.
The relative importance of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi at this time should
be kept in perspective. Neither al-Mihdhar nor al-Hazmi at the time of
their travel to Kuala Lumpur were identified as key al-Qa'ida members
or associates. Thus, at this point, their significance to us was that
they might lead us to others or to threat information. During this
period when all CIA facilities were involved in dealing with the
Millennium Threat, there was particular CTC focus on three separate
groups of al-Qa'ida personnel:
-- Those known to have been already involved in a terrorist attack
such as the East Africa embassy bombings, or suspected of being
involved in planning a reported attack (e.g., East Africa embassy
bombing suspect Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir);
-- Senior al-Qa'ida personnel outside Afghanistan known to be
directors or coordinators of terrorist operations, or senior money
couriers, liaison officers or manipulators of NGO's and businesses
supporting terrorist groups (e.g., terrorist operational planner Abu
Zubaydah); and
-- Senior al-Qa'ida personnel inside Afghanistan, particularly those
close to Bin Ladin who might know of his attack or travel plans (e.g.,
Bin Ladin deputy Muhammad Atef).
Surveillance began with the arrival of Khalid al-Mihdhar on 5 January
2000, and ended on 8 January, when he left Kuala Lumpur. Surveillance
indicated that the behavior of the individuals was consistent with
clandestine activity -- they did not conduct any business or tourist
activities while in Kuala Lumpur, and they used public telephones and
cyber cafes exclusively.
Other individuals were also positively identified by the surveillance
operation.
-- Later in 2001 an individual was identified as Saeed Muhammad Bin
Yousaf (aka Khalid), who became a key planner in the October 2000 USS
Cole bombing. Because of his later connection with the Cole bombing
and other serious plotting, we believe he was the most important
figure to attend the Kuala Lumpur meeting.
-- Another individual identified by surveillance was Malaysian citizen
Ahmad Sajuli Abdul Rahman. During the period, 6-8 January, Sajuli took
the al-Qa'ida visitors around Kuala Lumpur. Two years later, Sajuli
has been arrested and has admitted being part of the logistics unit
for Jemaah Islamiah, an affiliate of al-Qa'ida.
-- Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian chemist who, it was later determined, was
directed by a terrorist leader to make his apartment available to the
al-Qa'ida operatives. He is now under arrest.
-- Sufaat's name would later be connected to that of Zacarias
Moussaoui.
To this day, we still do not know what was discussed at the Kuala
Lumpur meeting. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi remained there a few days. On
8 January 2000, they traveled to another Southeast Asian country with
Khalid. We learned in March 2000 that al-Hazmi flew from that country
to Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. We did not learn that al-Midhar
was on the same flight until August, 2001.
-- Our receipt of the information in March should have triggered the
thought to watchlist al-Hazmi, but no CTC officer recalls even having
seen the cable on his travel to LA when it arrived.
Al-Mihdhar departed the U.S. on 10 June 2000 and obtained a new
passport and U.S. visa, possibly for operational security reasons.
Al-Mihdhar applied for this new U.S. visa in Jeddah in 13 June and
stated that he had never traveled to the U.S. before. On 4 July 2001,
he returned to the U.S., entering in New York.
During August 2001, CIA had become increasingly concerned about a
major terrorist attack on U.S. interests, and I directed a review of
our files to identify potential threats. CTC reviewed its holdings on
al-Mihdhar because of his connections to other terrorists. In the
course of that review, CTC found that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi had
entered the U.S. on 15 January 2000. It determined that al-Mihdhar
departed the U.S. on 10 June 2000 and reentered on 4 July 2001. CTC
found no record of al-Hazmi's departure from the U.S.
-- On 23 August, CIA sent a message-marked "immediate" -- to the
Department of State, INS, Customs, and the FBI requesting to enter al
Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, Bin Ladin -- related individuals, into
VISA/VIPER, TIPOFF and TECS. The message said that CIA recommends that
al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi be watchlisted immediately.
There are at least two points before August 2001 when these
individuals were on our scope with sufficient information to have been
watchlisted. During the intense operations to thwart the Millennium
and Ramadan threats, the watchlist task in the case of these two
al-Qa'ida operatives slipped through. The error exposed a weakness in
our internal training and an inconsistent understanding of watchlist
thresholds. Corrective steps have been taken.
-- The CIA and the State Department are cooperating to transform the
TIPOFF all-source watchlist into a National Watchlist Center. This
center will serve as the point of contact and coordination for all
watchlists in the U.S. government.
-- We have increased managerial review of the system to reduce the
chance that watchlist opportunities will be missed in the crush of
other urgent business.
-- We have designed a database and assembled a team to consolidate
information on the identities of known and suspected terrorists, and
to flag any that has not been passed to the proper audience.
We have lowered the threshold for nominating individuals for the
watchlist and clarified that threshold for our officers
-- We have lowered the threshold for dissemination of information that
used to be held closely as "operational."
These corrective steps notwithstanding, we must not underestimate our
enemies' capabilities.
-- We know that the plot was extremely resilient.
-- We know that al-Qa'ida deliberately chose young men who had no
record of affiliation with terrorist activities; 17 of the 19
hijackers were clean in this respect.
-- We know that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar tried to become pilots but
abandoned the effort because of poor technical and English language
skills. By the end of 2000, a replacement pilot for Flight 77, Hani
Hanjur, was in the United States.
-- We know that Ramzi bin Al-Shib tried on multiple occasions to get
into the U.S. and failed, and yet the plot continued.
-- Finally, we know that Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested but refused
to provide information on the plot.
Run up to 9/11 -- the Warning Issue
In the months leading up to 9/11, we were convinced Bin Ladin meant to
attack Americans, meant to kill large numbers, and that the attack
could be at home, abroad, or both. And we reported these threats
urgently.
Our collection sources "lit up" during this tense period. They
indicated that multiple spectacular attacks were planned, and that
some of these plots were in the final stages.
-- Some of the reporting implicated known al-Qa'ida operatives.
-- The reports suggested that the targets were American, although some
reporting simply pointed to the West or Israel.
-- But the reporting was maddeningly short on actionable details. The
most ominous reporting, hinting at something large, was also the most
vague. The only occasions in this reporting where there was a
geographic context, either explicit or implicit, it appeared to point
abroad, especially to the Middle East.
-- By long established doctrine, we disseminated these raw reports
immediately and widely to policymakers and action agencies such as the
military, State Department, the FAA, FBI, Department of
Transportation, the INS, and others.
-- This reporting, by itself, stood as a dramatic warning of imminent
attack.
Our analysts worked to find linkages among the reports, as well as
links to past terrorist threats and tactics. We considered whether
al-Qa'ida was feeding us this reporting -- trying to create panic
through disinformation -- yet we concluded that the plots were real.
When some reporting hinted that an attack had been delayed, we
continued to stress that there were, indeed, multiple attacks planned
and that several continued on track. And when we grew concerned that
so much of the evidence pointed to attacks overseas, we noted that Bin
Ladin's principal ambition had long been to strike our homeland.
Nevertheless with specific regard to the 9/11 plot, we never acquired
the level of detail that allowed us to translate our strategic
concerns into something we could act on.
The Intelligence Community Counterterrorism Board also issued several
threat advisories during the summer 2001. These advisories -- the
fruit of painstaking analytical work contained phrases like "al-Qa'ida
is most likely to attempt spectacular attacks resulting in numerous
casualties," and "al-Qa'ida is prepared to mount one or more terrorist
attacks at any time."
A sign that our warnings were being heard -- both from our analysis
and from the raw intelligence we disseminated -- was that the FAA
issued two alerts to air carriers in the summer of 2001.
Our warnings complemented strategic warnings we had been delivering
for years about the real threat of terrorism to America.
-- Recall, Mr. Chairman, my testimony in open session before your
committee on February 2, 1999 when I told you "there is not the
slightest doubt that Usama Bin Ladin, his worldwide allies, and his
sympathizers are planning further attacks against us." I told you "he
will strike wherever in the world he thinks we are vulnerable" and
that we were "concerned that one or more of Bin Ladin's attacks could
occur at any time."
-- In February 2000, I testified in open session that, "Everything we
have learned recently confirms our conviction that (UBL) wants to
strike further blows against America" and that he could strike
"without additional warning."
-- Again in 20011 told you that "terrorists are seeking out 'softer'
targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties" and that Bin
Ladin is "capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no
warning."
-- In a National Intelligence Estimates in 1995 we warned, "As an open
and free democracy, the United States is particularly vulnerable to
various types of terrorist attacks. Several kinds of targets are
especially at risk: national symbols such as the White House and the
Capitol, and symbols of U.S. capitalism such as Wall Street; power
grids, communications switches, water facilities, and transportation
infrastructure particularly civil aviation, subway systems, cruise
lines, and petroleum pipelines; places where large numbers of people
congregate, such as large office buildings, shopping centers, sports
arenas, and airport and other transportation terminals. "
-- The same estimate also said, "We assess that civil aviation will
figure prominently among possible terrorist targets in the United
States. This stems from the increasing domestic threat posed by
foreign terrorists, the continuing appeal of civil aviation as a
target, and a domestic aviation security system that has been the
focus of media attention: We have evidence that individuals linked to
terrorist groups or state sponsors have attempted to penetrate
security at U.S. airports in recent years. The media have called
attention to, among other things, inadequate security for checked
baggage. Our review of the evidence obtained thus far about the plot
uncovered in Manila in early 1995, suggests the conspirators were
guided in their selection of the method and venue of attack by
carefully studying security procedures in place in the region. If
terrorists operating in this country are similarly methodical, they
will identify serious vulnerabilities in the security system for
domestic fights. "
-- In a National Intelligence Estimate in 1997, we said "Civil
aviation remains a particularly attractive target for terrorist
attacks in light of the fear and publicity the downing of an airliner
would evoke and the revelations last summer of the vulnerability of
the U.S. air transport sector."
We have heard the allegation that our analysts erred by not explicitly
warning that hijacked aircraft might be used as weapons. Your staff
has been given access to over half a million pages of documents and
interviewed hundreds of intelligence officials in their efforts to
investigate this complex issue. The documents we provided show some 12
reports, spread over seven years, which pertain to possible use of
aircraft as weapons in terrorist attacks.
-- We disseminated those reports to the appropriate agencies -- such
as the FAA, Department of Transportation, and FBI -- as they came in.
Moreover, we also provided sanitized versions of intelligence reports
that were about threats to civil aviation so they could be distributed
more widely through the airline industry.
-- But if one goes back and collects the reports over the same period
that pertained to possible truck bombs, car bombs, assassinations,
kidnappings, or attacks using chemical, biological, radiological or
nuclear devices, those lists would have been far longer. A quick scan
of such reporting since 1996, for example, showed about 20 times as
many reports concerning car bombs and about five times as many reports
concerning weapons of mass destruction.
BUDGET AND RESOURCES
To evaluate our work on al-Qa'ida before 9/11 objectively, it is
essential that you look at three issues: global geopolitical issues we
were grappling with -- including counterterrorism; resource changes
throughout the 1990s that affected our ability to fight the
counterterrorism fight; and the overall health of U.S. intelligence
during this period. It is simply not enough to look at al-Qa'ida in
isolation.
The last decade saw a number of conflicting and competing trends:
military forces deployed to more locations than ever in our nation's
history; a growing counter proliferation and counterterrorism threat;
constant tensions in the Mid East and, to deal with these and a host
of other issues, far fewer intelligence dollars and manpower. At the
end of the Cold War, the Intelligence Community, like much of the
National Security Community, was asked by both Congress and successive
administrations to pay the price of the "peace dividend."
The cost of the "peace dividend" was that during the 1990s our
Intelligence community funding declined in real terms -- reducing our
buying power by tens of billions of dollars over the decade. We lost
nearly one in four of our positions. This loss of manpower was
devastating, particularly in our two most manpower intensive
activities: all-source analysis and human source collection. By the
mid-1990s, recruitment of new CIA analysts and case officers had come
to a virtual halt. NSA was hiring no new technologists during the
greatest information technology change in our lifetimes. It is
absolutely essential that we understand that both Congress and the
Executive Branch for most of the decade embraced the idea that we
could "surge" our resources to deal with emerging intelligence
challenges, including threats from terrorism. And surge we did.
-- As I "declared war" against al-Qa'ida in 1998 -- which was in the
aftermath of the East Africa embassy bombings -- we were in our fifth
year of round-the-clock support to Operation Southern Watch in Iraq.
-- Just three months earlier, we were embroiled in answering questions
on the India and Pakistan nuclear tests and trying to determine how we
could surge more people to understanding and countering weapons of
mass destruction proliferation.
-- In early 1999, we surged more than 800 analysts and redirected
collection assets from across the Intelligence Community to support
the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
During this time of increased military operations around the globe,
the Defense Department was also reducing its tactical intelligence
units and funding. This caused the Intelligence Community to stretch
our capabilities to the breaking point because national systems were
covering the gaps in tactical intelligence. It is always our policy to
give top priority to supporting military operations.
While we grappled with this multitude of high priority, overlapping
crises, we had no choice but to modernize selective intelligence
systems and infrastructure in which we'd deferred necessary
investments while we downsized -- or we would have found ourselves out
of business. We had a vivid example of the cost of deferring
investments a few years ago when NSA lost all communications between
the headquarters and its field stations and we were unable to process
any of that information for several days. We have a more current
example of the cost of deferred investments today as we struggle to
recapitalize our aging satellite cons
tellation -- another "return" on the peace dividend, given that
conscious decisions to accept risk and defer replacing these systems
were made in the mid-1990s. At the same time, we added the National
Imagery and Mapping Agency to the Intelligence Community along with
enormous funding shortfalls required to merge and modernize its
geospatial and imagery functions.
Throughout the Intelligence Community during this period we made
difficult resource reallocation decisions to try to rebuild critical
mission areas affected by the funding cuts. For example,
-- In CIA we launched a program to rebuild our Clandestine Service.
This meant overhauling our recruitment and training practices and our
infrastructure. We launched similar initiatives to rebuild our
analytic depth and expertise, and to re-acquire our leading edge in
technology.
Although we will not be given credit for these efforts in the war on
terrorism, they most assuredly contributed to that effort.
-- NSA made the hard decision to cut additional positions to free up
pay and benefit dollars to patch critical infrastructure problems and
to modestly attempt to capitalize on the technology revolution.
But with the al-Qa'ida threat growing more ominous, and with our
resources devoted to countering it clearly inadequate, we began taking
money and people away from other critical areas to improve our efforts
against terrorism.
Despite the resource reductions and the enormous competing demands for
our attention, we managed to triple Intelligence Community-wide
funding for counterterrorism from fiscal year 1990 to 1999. The
Counter-terrorism Center's resources nearly quadrupled in that same
period. As your own Joint Inquiry Staff charts show, we had
significantly reallocated both dollars and people inside our programs
to work the terrorism problem. This inquiry has singled out CIA
resources specifically and I want to address it specifically.
From a budget perspective, the last part of the 1990s reflects CIA's
efforts to shift to a wartime footing against terrorism. CIA's budget
had declined 18 percent in real terms during the decade and we
suffered a loss of 16 percent of our personnel. Yet in the midst of
that stark resource picture, CIA's funding level for counterterrorism
just prior to 9/11 was more than 50 percent above our FY 1997 level.
CTC personnel increased by over 60 percent for that same period. The
CIA consistently reallocated and sought additional resources for this
fight. In fact, in 1994, the budget request for counterterrorism
activities equaled less than four percent of the total CIA program. In
the FY 2002 CIA budget request we submitted prior to 9/11,
counterterrorism activities constituted almost 10 percent of the
budget request. During a period of budget stringency when we were
faced with rebuilding essential intelligence capabilities, I had to
make some tough choices. Although resources for virtually everything
else in CIA was going down, counterterrorism resources were going up.
But after the U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed, we knew that
neither surging our resources nor internal realignments were
sufficient to fund a war on terrorism. So in the fall of 1998,1 asked
the Administration to increase intelligence funding by more than $2.0
billion annually for fiscal years 2000-2005 and I made similar
requests for FY 2001-2005 and FY 2002-2007. Only small portions of
these requests were approved. Counterterrorism funding and manpower
needs were number one on every list I provided to Congress and the
administration and, indeed, it was at the top of the funding list
approved by Speaker Gingrich in FY 1999, the first year in which we
received a significant infusion of new money for U.S. intelligence
capabilities during the decade of the '90s.
That supplemental and those that followed it, that you supplied, were
essential to our efforts -- they helped save American lives. But we
knew that we could not count on supplemental funds to build multi-year
programs and that's why we worked so hard to reallocate our resources
and to seek five year funding increases. Many of you on this Committee
and the Appropriations Committees understood this problem very well.
You were enormously helpful to us. And we are grateful.
I want to conclude with a couple of comments about manpower. In CIA
alone, I count the equivalent of 700 officers working counterterrorism
in August 2001 at both headquarters and in the field. That number does
not include the people who were working to penetrate either
technically or through human sources a multitude of threat targets
from which we could derive intelligence on terrorists. Nor does it
include friendly liaison services and coalition partners. You simply
cannot gauge the level of effort by counting only the people who had
the words "al-Qa'ida" or "Bin Ladin" in their position description.
We reallocated all the people we could given the demands placed on us
for intelligence on a number of the highest priority issues like
chemical, nuclear and biological proliferation and support to
operational military forces, and we surged thousands of people to
fight this fight when the threat was highest. But when we realized
surging wasn't sufficient, we began a sustained drumbeat both within
the administration and here on the Hill that we had to have more
people and money devoted to this fight.
We can argue for the rest of the day about the exact number of people
we had working this problem but what we never said, was that the
numbers we had were enough. Our officers told your investigators that
they were always shorthanded. They were right. America may never know
the names of those officers, but America should know they are heroes.
They worked tirelessly for years to combat Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida and
have responded to the challenge of combating terrorism all during this
time, with remarkable intensity. Their dedication, professionalism and
creativity stopped many al-Qa'ida plots in their tracks -- they saved
countless American lives. Most of them are still in this fight -- are
essential to this fight -- and they honor us by their continued
service.
Thanks to the last two emergency supplementals and the
administration's FY 03 budget request, which both Houses approved
during the past week, we have begun to move aggressively to reverse
the funding shortfalls that have had such an impact on the nation's
intelligence capabilities. But we have hardly scratched the surface in
our efforts to recover from the manpower reductions, and we cannot
reconstitute overnight the cadre of seasoned case officers and assets
overseas, or the expert team of analysts we've lost. It will take many
more years to recover from the capabilities we lost during the
resource decline of the 1990s.
FINAL OBSERVATIONS
Success against the terrorist target must be measured against all
elements of our nation's capabilities, policies and will. The
intelligence community and the FBI are important parts of the
equation, but by no means the only parts. We need a national,
integrated strategy in our fight against terrorism that incorporates
both offense and defense. The strategy must be based on three pillars:
-- Continued relentless effort to penetrate terrorist groups, whether
by human or technical means, whether alone or in partnership with
others.
-- Second, intelligence, military, law enforcement, and diplomacy must
stay on the offense continually against terrorism around the world. We
must disrupt and destroy the terrorists' operational chain of command
and momentum, deny them sanctuary anywhere and eliminate their sources
of financial and logistical support.
Nothing did more for our ability to combat terrorism than the
President's decision to send us into the terrorist's sanctuary. By
going in massively, we were able to change the rules for the
terrorists. Now they are the hunted. Now they have to spend most of
their time worrying about their survival. al-Qa'ida must never again
acquire a sanctuary.
-- Third, on defense, we need systematic security improvements to
protect our country's people and infrastructure and create a more
difficult operating environment for terrorists. The objective is to
understand our vulnerabilities better than the terrorist do, take
action to reduce those vulnerabilities, to increase the costs and
risks for terrorists to operate in the United States and, over time,
make those costs unacceptable to them.
We have learned an important historic lesson: We can no longer race
from threat to threat, resolve it, disrupt it and then move on.
Targets at risk remain at risk.
-- In 1993, the first attack on the World Trade Center did, in
comparative terms, modest damage. A plot around the same time to
attack New York City tunnels and landmarks was broken up. We all
breathed a sigh of relief and moved on, focusing the effort mostly on
bringing perpetrators to justice. The terrorists came back.
-- At the Millennium, a young terrorist panicked at a Canada-U.S.
border crossing and his plan to attack an airport in Los Angeles was
exposed and thwarted. We breathed another sigh of relief and prepared
for his trial. Al Qa'ida's plan has only been delayed.
-- Last winter, another young terrorist on an airliner ineptly tried
to detonate explosives in his shoes and was stopped by alert crew and
passengers. At this point, we're smarter -- we started checking
everyone's shoes for explosives. It is not nearly enough.
-- In the last year, we have gone on high alert several times for good
reason, only to have no attack occur. We all breathed a sigh of relief
and thought, "maybe it was a false alarm." It wasn't.
-- We must design systems that reduce both the chances of an attack
getting through and its impact if it does. We must address both the
threat and our vulnerability. We must not allow ourselves to mentally
"move on" while this enemy is still at large.
I strongly support the President's proposal to create a Department of
Homeland Security. The nation very much needs the single focus that
this department will bring to homeland security. We have a foreign
intelligence community and law enforcement agencies, but we have not
had a cohesive body responsible and empowered for homeland security.
The President's proposal closes that gap while building bridges
between all three communities.
-- The Department's most important role will be to correlate threat
warnings and assessments about evolving terrorist strategies with a
fine-grained understanding of the vulnerabilities of all sectors of
the homeland and translate that into a system of protection for the
people and infrastructure of the United States.
While the Department will be vital to our homeland defense, the most
valued resource for our work against terrorism has always been and
will forever be our people.
Moving from this necessary organizational change, I cannot emphasize
enough our overwhelming need to recruit and train the intelligence
officers we need to win this war.
Terrorists have a tactical advantage. They can pick and choose any
target they please, who are willing to sacrifice their lives, and who
don't care how many innocents they hurt or kill have tactical
advantage. Developing the intelligence to combat them is manpower
intensive. With the personnel we have invested in counterterrorism
today, we can do much more than we could before 9/11, but more are
still needed. I remind you that we lost nearly 1-in-4 of our positions
since the end of the Cold War.
Our people also need better ways to communicate. Moreover, we also
need systems that enable us to share critical information quickly
across bureaucratic boundaries. Systems to put our intelligence in
front of those who need it wherever they may be, whatever their
specific responsibilities for protecting the American people from the
threat of terrorist attack. That means we must move information in
ways and to places it has never before had to move. We are improving
our collaborative systems. We need to improve our multiple
communications links -- both within the Intelligence Community and now
in the Homeland Security community as well. Building, maintaining, and
constantly updating this system will require a massive, sustained
budget infusion, separate from our other resource needs.
Now, more than ever before, we need to make sure our customers get
from us exactly what they need -- which generally means exactly what
they want -- fast and free of unnecessary restrictions. Chiefs of
police across the country express understandable frustration at what
they do not know. But there's something else: Intelligence officers in
the federal government want to get their hands on locally collected
data. Each could often use what the other may already have collected.
The proposed Department of Homeland Security will help develop this
vertical sharing of information. So, too, will the Intelligence
Community's experience in supporting our armed forces. We're going to
have to put that experience to work in "supporting the mayor." We
don't have the luxury of an alternative.
One last point with regard to our human talent. As critical as
terrorism is, our people will not concentrate solely on
counterterrorism. Even in the last year, when national attention was
focused on terror, other events occurred which demanded the attention
of experienced intelligence officers. The risk of an Indian-Pakistani
war and the deterioration of the situation in the Mid East are just
two examples. The Intelligence Community must keep skilled,
experienced officers on all such issues.
CONCLUDING STATEMENT
Our effectiveness has increased since September 11, and the
Intelligence Community will continue to pursue a strategy of bringing
the war to the terrorists.
But in the counterterrorism business there is no such thing as 100
percent success -- there will never be.
-- Some of what terrorists plan and do will remain hidden. The al
Qa'ida practice is to keep their most lethal plots within a small,
tightly knit group of fanatics. This is not an impossible target, but
it is among our hardest.
-- Total success against such targets is impossible. Some attackers
will continue to get through us.
It may be comforting on occasion to think that if we could find the
one process that went wrong, then we could remedy that failing and
return to the sense of safety we enjoyed prior to 9/11. The reality is
that we were vulnerable to suicidal terrorist attacks and we remain
vulnerable to them today. That is not a pleasant fact for Americans to
live with, but it is the case. There are no easy fixes. We will
continue to look incisively at our own processes and to listen to
others in an ongoing effort to do our jobs better. But we must also be
honest with ourselves and with the public about the world in which we
live.
The fight against international terrorism will be long and difficult.
-- It will require the patience and diligence that the President has
asked for.
-- It will require resources -- sustained over a multi-year period --
to recapitalize our intelligence infrastructure on a pace that matches
the changing technical and operational environment we face.
-- It will also require countries that have previously ignored the
problem of terrorism or refused to cooperate with us to step up and
choose sides.
It will require all of us across the government to follow the example
of the American people after September 11 -- to come together, to work
as a team, and pursue our mission with unyielding dedication and
unrelenting fidelity to our highest ideals. We owe those who died on
September 11 and all Americans no less.
(end text)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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