Another way in which the Customs Service combats the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the threat of terrorism is through the delivery of international training and technical assistance to foreign border control agencies in high-threat countries. In cooperation with the Departments of State, Defense, Energy, and the Federal Aviation Administration, Customs has, for many years, been providing this type of assistance, both in the U.S. and overseas. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Project Amber and the DOD/USCS Counterproliferation Program provide training and law enforcement equipment, mainly to the countries of Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program provides training worldwide. The Customs Service has recognized the serious threat posed by terrorism groups, and is striving to meet the challenges of effectively preventing terrorism activity at U.S. borders. The foregoing initiatives are yielding positive results in enhancing the safety and security of the nation from trans-border terrorist activity. The Customs Service will continue to develop these programs, and additional technology, to combat this threat and fulfill its mission to protect the nation's borders. The Customs Service would like to thank the Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee for your interest, and the opportunity to provide you with this information. PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRIAN MICHAEL JENKINS Today's Senate hearing on terrorist activities in the United States comes at a crucial moment. As we have edged toward military action in the Middle East there has been growing fear that terrorists instructed by Iraq or some other Middle Eastern foe, or perhaps individually inspired by their opposition to U.S. policy will carry out attacks in this country. Although Saddam Hussein wisely uttered no public threats, less constrained extremist elements in the Arab world, some women with support networks in the United States, have. The hearing, held five years almost to the day after the World Trade Center bombing, provides a forum for reviewing the current terrorist threat and for addressing the difficult question of what can be done to improve U.S. efforts against terrorist support activities in the United States. The answer is proceed with caution. In the five years since the World Trade Center bombing, there have been more terrorist bombings as well as several foiled attempts. The terrorist threat is real. At the same time, it is important to keep it in perspective. An American has a 1 in 12,000 chance of being a victim of ordinary homicide, less than a 1 in 10 million chance of dying at the hands of a terrorist. Exaggerating the threat risks provoking the same panic and alarm that terrorists hope to create. While the Senate hearing focuses on foreign terrorist activities, we must also bear in mind that the terrorist threat has a significant domestic component. With the exception of the discovery of a second bombing plot in New York shortly after the World Trade Center bombing and last year's uncovering of a scheme to bomb New York's subways, the remaining successful and foiled terrorist attacks have been the work of domestic terrorists-white supremacists, anti-abortion and anti-federal government extremists. With tension in the Middle East so high, we might easily mislabel a terrorist attack, should one occur, blaming it on foreign rather than domestic foes. In the first hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, many people were convinced it was another Middle East attack. In a nation of immigrants, imported quarrels are nothing new. Along with the wretched and the poor, we have taken in the firebrands and the bombers. In the past 25 years, Armenian, Serb, Croatian, Palestinian, Puerto Rican, Iranian, Libyan, Chinese, Cuban, and Jewish extremists have all carried out attacks in the U.S. And Immigrant communities have supported various armed struggles abroad. At the beginning of this century, Mexican revolutionaries recruited supporters on the streets of Los Angeles. Fifty years ago, American Jews actively supported the armed struggle to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Simply because a phenomenon has a long history does not make it more tolerable, but it does warn us not to define terrorism on grounds of ethnicity or national origin. That said, the principal foreign terrorist threat to the United States right now comes from the Middle East: from anger at American support for Israel, from the hostility of Islamic fundamentalists who view American influence in the world as morally corrupting, potentially from Iraq and Iraqi sympathizers. That is not prejudice, but fact, which Americans of Middle Eastern origin must understand. It does not excuse discrimination; it counsels cool rhetoric on all sides. Our first line of defense against terrorism is intelligence. As a free society, we place strict constraints on domestic intelligence gathering-Americans will not toler ate a pervasive secret police. The intelligence task is rendered more difficult by the trend away from formal hierarchies and toward small ad hoc conspiracies. Despite these difficulties, authorities have uncovered terrorist plots and prevented a number of attacks, some of which could have had disastrous consequences. The existence of these plots demonstrates that the terrorist threat continues. The arrests hopefully also underscore that intelligence efforts are succeeding and should be supported. We must be realistic about what physical security, our second line of defense, can achieve. Physical security by itself cannot prevent terrorist attacks; it merely displaces the risk. We have made progress in increasing the difficulty of attacking certain targets previously favored by terrorists-notably commercial aviation. Much remains to be done in this area. Congress should support the recommendations made by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security and encourage the airline industry to seriously approach the problem complementing the improving security technologies with adequately paid, trained, and incentivized personnel. In accord with a recent report issued by the International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies, we also need to pay more attention to potential terrorist attacks on subways, trains, and buses a new combat arena of terrorists bent upon large-scale indiscriminate violence. Our third component of defense is an effective response comprising both crisis management and apprehension of the perpetrators. The World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings prompted municipal governments to plan how they would respond to large-scale terrorist attacks. The Department of Defense is placing greater emphasis on "home defense," which will see an increased role for the National Guard. Coordination between local, state, and Federal authorities and among federal agencies will be crucial but predictably difficult. As for apprehension and prosecution, that is a success story. Those responsible for terrorists attacks here and abroad have been brought to justice. We want to prevent terrorists from utilizing the United States as a source of weapons, military training, and funds for terrorist attacks, but we do not want to drive their political supporters completely underground. It is not solely a matter of civil liberties. Their ability to operate above ground gives them something to lose if they carry out terrorist attacks here and it facilitates monitoring their activities. Laws that prevent flexibility could also prevent the U.S. government from sometimes playing a useful diplomatic role in helping to resolve conflicts. Northern Ireland is a case in point, although perhaps a unique one. The United States has carefully used its influence to help broker negotiations between the Sinn Fein and the British and Irish governments. This diplomacy required a somewhat tortuous distinction between the "political" Sinn Fein and the "terrorist" IRA, and exquisitely choreographed meetings and statements in dealing with visiting Sinn Fein leaders subtleties that sometimes dissolved in the old-fashioned ethnic politics at city level. The IRA's desire to retain political and financial support from sympathetic Americans gave the U.S. government leverage to encourage moderation. It may work. The lesson: we oppose terrorism everywhere and support for it anywhere, but we must preserve some room for maneuver. Our most effective defense against terrorism will come not from more surveillance, concrete barriers, metal detectors or from new laws, but from our own virtues: courage, continued dedication to our ideals of a free society, realism in our acceptance of risk, stoicism in the face of danger, common sense and the skepticism that comes with it, the avoidance of extremism, humanity and sense of community too fleetingly expressed when we mourn the victims-in sum, from a true patriotism. PREPARED STATEMENT OF KENNETH R. MCKUNE, ACTING COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, DEPARTMENT OF STATE Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to provide for the record for your hearing on foreign terrorist activities in the United States this statement relating to the Secretary of State's designation of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO). This statement has been coordinated with the Departments of Justice and the Treasury, and represents the combined views of the Administration. The State Department is the lead agency for dealing with terrorism overseas. Unfortunately, however, terrorists do not respect international boundaries any more than they respect human lives and common decency. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") added a new Section 219 to the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"), which authorizes the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General, to designate an organization as a "foreign terrorist organization” if the organization meets certain legal criteria. The Secretary's designation on October 8, 1997, of thirty foreign terrorist organizations was the culmination of a massive interagency effort to identify foreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity and threaten U.S. national security or the security of U.S. nationals. Under the terms of the INA, terrorist activity includes not only certain acts of violence but also activities which provide material support to terrorist organizations, such as raising money, providing training, obtaining weapons or false documents, and recruitment. The designation process was truly a cooperative project, in which State worked closely with the Departments of Justice and the Treasury, the FBI and the intelligence community. Congress included in the legislation a provision that allows a designated organization to challenge its designation in court. The provision also requires that the judicial review be based solely on the administrative record used by the Secretary in making the determination. This requirement necessitated that the administrative records be as thorough and comprehensive as possible to withstand possible judicial review. Gathering and evaluating information on a large number of terrorist organizations and reviewing the material for the administrative records was a labor- and time-intensive process involving many analysts and legal specialists from several Departments and agencies. The list of organizations included in the Department's annual "Pattern of Global Terrorism" was only a starting point. A much more detailed compilation and analysis of information was required for each organization to determine whether it met the statutory requirements for designation, and to produce a substantial administrative record that would withstand judicial review. Following the mandated Congressional notification period, State formally promulgated the designations in the Federal Register on October 8, 1997, as required under the law. But we went beyond that requirement. The Secretary herself made the announcement at the Department's daily press briefing to help give the designations a high profile. The major media, including news agencies serving overseas outlets, carried the story. The designations were posted on both the State Department and Treasury Department's internet websites and disseminated by USIA. Officials from State and Justice appeared on USIA's Worldnet programs to discuss the issue. State, Justice, and Treasury took exceptional measures to ensure that the designations were widely disseminated and publicized. There are three primary legal consequences of the designation of a foreign terrorist organization: (1) It is a crime for anyone in the United States knowingly to provide funds or other forms of material support to the designated organization; (2) U.S. financial institutions are required to block the funds of any designated organization and its agents and to advise the Treasury Department of such action; and (3) Aliens who are members or representatives of a designated organization are not eligible to enter the United States. It is difficult to quantify the impact of the law and designations after only four months. Clearly, criminal cases which involve the international tracing of funds require some time to develop. However, there are other aspects to consider especially the potential deterrent effects. Congressional passage of the law, the President's signing it at a large public ceremony, and the process of designating foreign terrorist organizations were widely reported in the press. For those law abiding citizens who do not want to contribute to a terrorist organization, the law and publicity surrounding it should deter further contributions or other forms of material support. Moreover, Justice, for the first time, will not have to prove during a criminal prosecution that the defendant specifically intended that the funds he was contributing were to be used for terrorist activity. It will only need to prove that a defendant knowingly provided material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, regardless of how he intended the money to be used. Internationally, passage of the AEDPA and the Secretary's designations have had a substantial impact. Several international fora have begun discussions on ways to limit the provision of funds and other resources to terrorist organizations. A number of foreign governments have commented favorably on the Secretary's designation of foreign terrorist organizations, including Colombia, Israel, Japan, Peru, Turkey, Spain and Sri Lanka. The passage and implementation of the section 303 fund raising provision and the section 323 material support provision also enhance our efforts to encourage other countries to take similar steps, and some of our friends are taking a fresh look to see whether they should tighten their own domestic laws and regulations. We have distributed information on the legislation to our embassies overseas for use with their host governments. My office and the State Department's Legal Adviser's office have given briefings to officials from a dozen or more embassies here as well as visiting foreign officials. We also make a point of discussing the legislation and fund raising issues during our bilateral and multilateral conferences with a number of countries. As I noted earlier, the INA permits a designated foreign terrorist organization to seek, within 30 days of the designation, judicial review of that designation in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Only two organizations, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, of Sri Lanka) and the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, of Iran), have filed applications for judicial review. Both cases are currently before the court. The provision of the statute which bases the Court's review on the administrative record is critically important to limiting the amount of discovery, particularly of classified information, which a designated foreign terrorist organization may obtain during the judicial review process. The statute also provides that the Court's review of any classified material contained in the administrative record will be conducted ex parte and in camera. This protection was important to the success of the designation process because it permitted the inclusion of classified information in the administrative records of the 30 designated organizations. For each of the organizations, the Secretary had to rely heavily on classified information. Although the State Department often relies on finished intelligence in its decision-making process, it was the view of the Justice Department that, in reviewing an administrative record, a Court would want to understand more completely the underlying facts and analysis from which conclusions were drawn. For example, if a terrorist act was attributed to a particular organization, a Court would want to know the basis for that attribution. Without the protection of classified information from unwarranted disclosure, the Secretary would not have had the benefit of this information and analysis from the intelligence community to inform her decisions. In sum, despite the tremendous burden of preparing in advance the required administrative records, we believe the AEDPA to be a useful law. It can be improved. We are presently engaged in developing possible refinements to the current statute based on our overall experience during the implementation process and upon Treasury's many years of experience in administering sanctions programs, such as the 1995 Executive order and sanctions regime against terrorists threatening the Middle East process. A number of suggestions for improvements are under internal discussion. Once we complete this interagency process, we would look forward-along with Justice, the FBI, and Treasury-to discuss possible improvements to AEDPA. Finally, regarding your question concerning the Irish Republican Army, last October, the Secretary took note of the July 19, 1997 announcement by the IRA of an unequivocal cease-fire, as well as the subsequent decision by the British Government that the cease-fire was genuine in word and deed, permitting Sinn Fein to join inclusive all-party talks in Belfast. The situation, especially during the past week, has become very fluid. We are monitoring it very closely. We hope that this statement will be useful to the Subcommittee and we look forward to being able to work together in our common fight against terrorism. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Hon. JON L. KYL, DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for providing the opportunity for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to appear before your Subcommittee at the February 24, 1998, hearing entitled "Foreign Terrorists in America: Five Years after the World Trade Center." I was unable to attend but would like to submit this letter for the official hearing record to supplement the FBI's testimony. The bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City five years ago was a wake-up call to the American people and to law enforcement of the reality of foreign-directed terrorism on our soil. The impact of the bombing was felt well beyond New York City as we all came to realize that our borders were no longer impermeable to terrorist attack. In the five years since that tragic day, I am proud to have been a part of what has been an enormously successful, multi-faceted effort to reduce the threat of terrorism and enhance this Nation's ability to prevent and, when necessary, respond to terrorist acts. Although the FBI's official statement for the February 24, 1998, hearing record discusses these matters in detail, I would like to briefly highlight three particularly noteworthy programs in which the FBI has been instrumental. THE FBI'S COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER One of the most notable endeavors undertaken since 1993 in the war against terrorism is the FBI's Counterterrorism Center. Established in 1996 with the generous support of congressional appropriations, the Center centralized the myriad facets of the FBI's Counterterrorism program and focused efforts on three fronts: International terrorism operations both within the United States and in support of extraterritorial investigations; domestic terrorism operations; and counterterrorism relating to both international and domestic terrorism. The Counterterrorism Center is an interagency endeavor in which 18 other federal agencies participate on a daily basis. The FBI has forged stronger working relationships with these agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as a result of the cooperation and shared focus of the Center's participants in combating terrorism. The establishment of the Center was an unprecedented opportunity for these 18 agencies to work together for a common good by sharing terrorist-related information developed by each agency. I am proud of the successful collaboration that the Counterterrorism Center represents and of the enhanced capabilities it has provided in our efforts to combat terrorism. DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS PROGRAMS The FBI has also established, in conjunction with the Department of Defense, "Domestic Preparedness" programs to train and equip personnel both within and outside the FBI to address chemical and biological incidents, as well as incidents involving improvised explosive devices. Over $21 million of the FBI's 1998 counterterrorism budget has been dedicated to train and equip local and state agencies to deal with these Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). In addition, over $8 million has been provided to the FBI's National Security Division, Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG), and Laboratory Division so they may train and equip each of our 56 field offices for such WMD incidents. Furthermore, due to increased funding from the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the FBI has assigned 175 Special Agents to WMD programs throughout our field offices. While the focus should clearly be on prevention of terrorist attacks, provisions for response in case of an attack are essential. Domestic preparedness programs provide that preparation. THE NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION CENTER Another enormously important undertaking has been the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), a government/industry partnership hosted by the FBI. The NIPC is designed to be staffed with specialists from the FBI, Department of Defense, other Intelligence Community members, and private industry. The goal of this group is to provide a broad, cooperational approach to assessing, warning, investigating, and responding to attacks on this Nation's interconnected and interdependent information infrastructures. The increasingly complex and interwoven nature of information systems used in government operations, private corporations, and satellite and telecommunications systems makes the threat of even a single intrusion into one of these systems potentially catastrophic. The NIPC will provide 24hour monitoring and connectivity among all levels of state, local, and federal government and our private sector partners. Additionally, in 1995, "Targeting the National Information Infrastructure" was added to the FBI's National Security Threat List (NSTL) with the approval of the Attorney General. This expansion of the NSTL gives our Agents the authority to investigate incidents affecting information infrastructures perpetrated or coordinated by foreign intelligence services. This enhances the work of our seven Computer Crime Squads in our major metropolitan field offices, and the computer investigative teams in each of our 56 field offices. By establishing the NIPC, enhancing investigative authority, and dedicating Agents to detecting and investigating informationbased attacks, we are limiting the vulnerability of our Nation's essential infrastructures. While the Counterterrorism Center, Domestic Preparedness programs, and the NIPC have greatly enhanced our ability to combat terrorism here in the United States, I must stress that our progress will be eradicated should one overriding issue remain unaddressed. |