Congress of the United States

U.S. Senate

Hearing of the

Committee on Government Affairs

September 21, 2001

*

Testimony of

Governor James S. Gilmore, III

Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia

&

Chairman

Advisory Panel to Assess the Capabilities for

Introduction

Chairman Lieberman, Senator Thompson, and distinguished Committee Members, thank you for inviting me to discuss recommendations of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, a national commission established by Congress in 1999 (P.L. 105-261). The Advisory Panel has assessed our Nation's combined federal, state and local capabilities to detect, deter, prevent - and respond to and recover from - a terrorist attack inside America's borders, and to offer recommendations for preparing the Nation to address terrorist threats.

For almost three years, I have served as Chairman of the Advisory Panel, and it has been my privilege to work with experts in a broad range of fields, including current and former federal, state and local officials and specialists in terrorism, intelligence, the military, law enforcement, emergency management, fire services, medicine and public health.

I am saddened to report that, as of today, one member of our Panel is reported as missing at ground zero in New York. Ray Downey, Chief of Special Operations for the New York City Fire Department, was one of the first emergency responders to arrive at the World Trade Center on September 11. Firemen from California to Virginia to New York know Ray Downey as a man of great courage and skill and commitment. Our prayers go out to Ray and his family.

Attack on American Freedom

Ladies and gentlemen, for many generations to come, September 11, 2001, is a day that will stand out in the history of the United States and, indeed, the entire world, as the day tyranny attacked freedom. Individuals who committed these attacks on the people of the United States, in New York and Virginia, sought a decisive strike, one that was designed to remake the world and the post-Cold War era.

The picture of two commercial airplanes careening into two office towers and a wounded Pentagon-recorded for posterity - forever will remind our children and grandchildren of how precious freedom is and that freedom can never be taken for granted.

The goal of these terrorists was to prove that the great democracies are not the way of the future. The goal was, in fact, to establish the dominance of tyranny, force, and fear - and to blot out a love of freedom and individual liberty, which has been growing consistently since the Enlightenment centuries ago. In the 21" century, the United States stands as the ultimate statement and symbol of that human freedom and liberty across the world; and, therefore, the United States was the country attacked.

Ladies and gentlemen, the people who committed these crimes, with those goals in mind, have failed. They have failed in their attacks. They have not blotted out the United States as the ultimate formation and symbol of liberty. They have not diminished the resolve of the United States. They have not created fear and terror in the United States.

Yes, we grieve as a civilized people for the people who have died. Freedom-loving people in New York at the World Trade Center - a stunning loss of life in the nation's largest city. At the Pentagon, across the river in Virginia. The people who died on the airplanes, totally innocent victims. As I recall, having read the manifest on the airplanes, there were fathers with their young daughters on those planes. Barbara Olson, who we all knew and loved. She was a personal friend mine. We lost our firemen and emergency rescue responders, who gave their lives attempting to save the lives of their fellow Americans. Ray Downey, another personal friend, may be one who gave the last measure of commitment. Yes, I grieve. The American people grieve. Any civilized people would grieve.

But, in the eternal conflict between freedom and tyranny, the people of the United States

shall never retreat.

Work of the Advisory Panel

Sooner or later, those who inflicted these injuries will feel the full weight of justice and the free world's combined efforts to hold them responsible.

We cannot undo their evil actions now. If only we could. Be we can, and must, move forward to do everything we can to prevent a tragedy of this magnitude from striking again in our homeland.

That brings me to the work of the Advisory Panel. The Advisory Panel was established by Section 1405 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, Public Law 105-261 (H.R. 3616, 105th Congress, 2nd Session) (October 17, 1998).

For the last three years I have worked with a distinguished panel of experts, with staff support from the RAND Corporation, to draw up a blueprint for American preparedness. Our commission has been a three-year commission. It began to work in the year 1999. We have issued two reports to the President and Congress. The first report was issued December of 1999, and the second report in December of 2000. Both reports can be downloaded from RAND's website: www.rand.org/organization/nsrd/terrpanel.

The work of our Advisory Panel is significantly and qualitatively different from any previous terrorism commission. Our panel includes a unique combination of experts from all three levels of government representing the intelligence community, front-line local emergency responders, military experts, and state and local law enforcement. We also have leaders from the health care community. Reflective of the broad array of experts and a strong "outside-thebeltway" perspective, our panel has addressed the full realm of issues from assessment of the risk to prescriptions for detection, prevention, response and recovery. We have focused a tremendous amount of attention upon state and local first-responders, as well as intelligence issues and national coordination topics. Other commissions have not covered as wide a realm of topics.

Conclusions & Recommendations Issued in First and Second Reports

In our first report (December 1999), we provided a comprehensive assessment of the actual threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Among our findings were the following:

First and foremost, the threat of a terrorist attack on some level inside our borders was inevitable, and the United States must prepare.

In assessing the kind of attack the United States could expect, we concluded that a conventional attack (such as the one that occurred on September 11) had a high probability of occurrence and should receive more attention than they were receiving at that time. We concluded that an attack using weapons of mass destruction, while threatening a high impact, had a lower probability of occurrence in the near term, but could not be ignored. Regardless of the kind of attack, we called for a national strategy to address the full spectrum of possible attacks.

We also said that the terrorist threat would be more lethal than ever before because the trend among terrorists is toward greater and greater lethality.

We concluded that the real weapon is not the device or the material involved, but the terrorist delivery capacity and capability. Unfortunately, I am afraid that this point has been bome out by the events of September 11.

Our review revealed that counter-terrorism efforts to date had been largely reactionary, to a threat not clearly understood. While we should prepare, first and foremost, for the most likely conventional terrorist attack scenario (such as the conventional attack we recently witnessed), we must also heed the threat of a more exotic attack by weapons of mass destruction.

We concluded that a clear comprehensive national vision and strategy for large or small events must be developed and put into place, but that such a vision and strategy did not presently exist as of the time of that report. We recognized that a coordinated national strategy could be built upon the well-tested system that already exists for responding to natural and man-made disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, toxic chemical spills and nuclear accidents. That is, firefighters, emergency medical providers, public health offices and private hospitals, police and the National Guard.

And we stressed the paramount importance of preserving our citizens' constitutional rights and civil liberties. We said, "[T]he Panel urges officials at all levels of government to ensure that the civil liberties of our citizens are protected." We can meet this terrorist threat without trampling the Constitution. In fact, the goal of the enemy would be to have us trample our constitutional rights. We don't have to do that and we should never ask the people of the United States to give up their freedoms because of an attack like this.

Our second report, issued a year later (December 2000), contained about 50 recommendations for improving our nation's preparedness against terrorism. Most importantly, the second report underscored the need for something more than a federal strategy. The federal government's role represents only one component of a national strategy. The distinction here is an important one. The federal government cannot address this threat alone. We need new public and private partnerships. Every state and local community has capabilities, resources, assets, experience and training that must be brought to bear in addressing this threat.

Among our most important recommendations in our second report are the following recommendations:

First, we called for statutory creation of a new "National Office for Combating Terrorism" to coordinate national terrorism policy and preparedness in the Executive Branch - located in the White House. The Director of this office should be high ranking, appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate. Foremost, the office should have the responsibility to develop a comprehensive national strategy to be approved by the President.

We proposed that Congress create a "Special Committee for Combating Terrorism." This could be a joint committee of senators and congressmen to create a unified legislative view or it could encompass two distinct committees, one for the House and one for the Senate. Of course, we do not presume to instruct the Congress on how it should conduct its affairs, but we offer that recommendation in the best interests of the people of the United States. The Special Committee should have a direct link to the Executive Branch's National Office for Combating Terrorism, and it should be the first referral for legislation preparing our nation for terrorist attacks.

Next, we addressed the issue of intelligence-sharing and focused on the fact that it is very typical in the intelligence community to hold information so close it can often not be communicated to those responsible parties who need to know. This is particularly true of sharing intelligence information with state and local authorities. Thus, we need to develop a comprehensive national intelligence system based on sound need-to-know principles.

We found our federal intelligence apparatus was lacking critical tools it needs to detect terrorist plots, so we recommended improvements to human intelligence capabilities such as, for example, rescinding the CIA guidelines on paying foreign informants engaged in terrorist or criminal activity.

We recognized the importance of state and local agencies in responding to and recovering from terrorist attacks and insisted they be included in the plotting of a national strategy. Thus, the panel recommended a number of ways to strengthen the nation's first responders: firemen, law enforcement, emergency medical services and emergency management.