this center does not relieve the other agencies from doing their own analysis and making their own determinations. In other words, they do not cede their responsibility to this new joint venture. But it is a little bit redundant, and redundancy in this case may not be a bad idea because theoretically this new center may be in a superior position to analyze data coming from a lot of different sources. Is that the way you understand it, Governor?

Mr. GILMORE. That is a very complicated point. It could create redundancies. I think that the sense of our commission is that the primary function for this type of analysis ought to rest in the fusion center. Now I guess that administratively it probably does not make sense to deprive the individual agencies of all ability to analyze information, otherwise how do they know what to give, and how do they know how to understand what they are getting. So I think I see that administrative point and I think that we would concur with that.

But I think we should guard against co-locating equal amounts of analysis capacity in both places because then the individual agencies I think would have a tendency to say, who needs that?

Mr. RUDMAN. Senator Pryor, that gets back to the Chairman's position on duplication. My sense is that, although obviously both the Bureau and the Agency will retain some analytical ability in the area of terrorism, I think the overwhelming amount of analysis is going to be done at this new joint venture, whether it be a joint venture or whether it be a fusion center. It just seems to me that is what is going to happen, because you do not have, unfortunately, that many people who are all that well-trained in this area. You are going to have to take a lot of them over the next several years and move them into this new co-located position.

Now you have a practical matter, knowing the way these places work, since the collection is coming through the eyes and ears of either the CIA or the FBI, it would be to me almost incredible if that would not be looked at, put in a sealed envelope and sent across the city electronically or otherwise. Obviously, people are going to be aware of it and contribute some analysis to it.

But that is not really your question. Your question is, is there going to be major analytical capability still at these places? I would hope not because then you get into duplication and then you get into some competition. I would hope this would be the place where the threat of terrorism and all intelligence thereto is analyzed.

Mr. GILMORE. Madam Chairman, may I add a point on that?
Chairman COLLINS. Certainly.

Mr. GILMORE. Because I want to address this issue of duplication which has emerged. I think that it is important to keep your eye on the ball. Focus on the issue. The issue is, what is the problem here? How do we share information? How do we get this information co-located in such a way that we share the dots. So that something significant from CIA combined with something from FBI suddenly has meaning where in the two pieces it may not. That is the issue.

The fusion center, the President's proposal, all these things are very much the same proposal. It is just a matter of administratively how you are going to shape it. They are intended to address that issue. Therefore, the question is does duplication become a dis

qualification of the solution? It does not. It merely becomes a challenge that has to be worked through and minimized.

Senator PRYOR. I agree with you. I can live with some duplication if we accomplish the goal we are setting out to accomplish. The question is always how to do it in the most efficiently, and effectively manor possible. That is a challenge that we all wrestle with here every day and I know you will too.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. Senator Akaka.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, very much, Madam Chairman. I thank you for this opportunity and I welcome Senator Rudman and Governor Gilmore. Senator Rudman, I knew you when I was in the House, and I know of your work in the Senate and you have really served our country well as a Senator, and even after the Senate. My concerns have been that we may have too many centers. The President in his State of the Union speech did add a new key component though which he called a Terrorist Threat Integration Center. I can see his intent there, and especially when we think that we have many centers. Yesterday I met with Dr. Cambone. He was nominated to a new position in the Defense Department and that position is undersecretary of intelligence. Now here is another effort in facing the threats of our country, not only domestic but foreign threats. So my concern is there may be too many centers trying to do the same thing.

[The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

Thank you Madam Chairman for organizing today's hearing. I am pleased that the Committee is continuing to focus on critical issues relating to our national security.

I am disappointed that the administration could not be with us today. The President's proposal to establish a Terrorist Threat Integration Center was one of the key components of his State of the Union address and the administration has issued several briefing papers on the concept.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Steve Cambone who has been nominated to the Defense Department position of Undersecretary for Intelligence. This is a new position at Defense is one of many additional efforts underway to improve intelligence management.

I am concerned that there may be too many centers being created to respond to the same threat. For example, the CIA has its Counter Terrorism Center-the Defense Intelligence Agency has its counter terrorism center-the new Department of Homeland Security will have an Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate-the Army has an Information Dominance Center-DOD is developing a Total Information Awareness program-and the FBI has a Counter Terrorism Division. Now the President proposes a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center.

When this Committee marked up the Homeland Security bill, I worked with Senators Lieberman, Levin, and Thompson to craft an intelligence division to ensure the Department received sufficient information concerning domestic threats and had the capability of responding to those threats. Unfortunately, that proposal was later rejected by the administration. My concern then-and now-was that there would be duplication of effort in the intelligence arena.

There can be only so many cooks in a kitchen.I think we have already reached our limit when it comes to analyzing intelligence information. We have a limited number of qualified intelligence analysts and a limited number of agents in the field developing information. Creating numerous centers in Washington-all looking at the same information-does not mean we will be better prepared for countering terrorist threats.

We have an esteemed group of experts this morning, including our former colleague, Senator Rudman. I look forward to their comments on this subject and I commend our Chairman for holding this hearing.

Senator AKAKA. Under the administration's plan, and I would like to direct this to the Governor, the Director of the CIA will inform the President about threats, but who is responsible for ensuring domestic investigation of threats that take place, and State and local enforcement are kept in the picture? Governor Gilmore, am I correct in thinking there is currently a disconnect?

Mr. GILMORE. Yes, Senator, there is a disconnect. I think that most people have understood that since September 11 as they have tried to analyze the problem and are trying to find ways to address that.

Just to touch on your Department of Defense comment just as a potential for more and more centers trying to do the same thing. It certainly is contemplated, I think, that this fusion center, this integration center, or however it is defined or structured would include people from the Defense Intelligence Agency, from the Department of Defense as well as from the CIA and the FBI and hopefully a place also for State and local people. It is a desire to begin to combine things in a way that structurally we have never done before.

I might point out, by the way, that I have spoken to some leaders in law enforcement from some of the major municipalities of the country and they have indicated that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces are doing some more of that communication and that they do feel like they are having an opportunity to work on the same team with that program. So that seems to be a program that is making some progress in terms of the collection efforts, in terms of the team for gathering information.

But at the end of the day I think there is a near virtual consensus everywhere that there needs to be some type of integration center or fusion center so that everybody has a centrally located place to learn all the information gathered from all the disparate areas as you have described.

Senator AKAKA. Senator Rudman, I know because of your background and experience as a Senator and your participation in security matters as well, I ask for your assessment and also your thinking about—and if you can explain to me what you know about the Terrorist Threat Integration Center that the President is proposing and whether that would answer my question, which officially is in charge of bringing together all foreign intelligence concerning threats inside the United States and the domestic law enforcement information about domestic threats and ensuring first that this information is thoroughly evaluated and that a timely investigation takes place?

And second, who ensures that local officials who might be affected by a threat are kept in the picture? I am hoping that the President's proposal on integration will bring that about. I was thinking of it in terms of the interagency coordinating group that would do this. Can you give me your views on that?

Mr. RUDMAN. I will, Senator Akaka. Thank you for your gracious comments. I enjoyed our service together.

Let me tell you that I do not think that I necessarily know the answer to that and I think that is a better question for the administration witnesses. But I think I know what the answer will probably be, so on that basis I will tell you what I believe the answer is but I just do not know for certain.

I am sure that this new threat analysis center will carry out the function that you are speaking of. I think theirs is purely analysis. The question then becomes, what happens to their product? Let us assume that their product produces a specific threat to Honolulu. The question is, how does the chief of police of Honolulu and the Governor of Hawaii get to know this information? That is really your question.

I think there are two answers to that question, or at least there should be. It is, I believe, now the primary responsibility of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate with local communities to make sure that the kind of information they have not been getting they will be getting.

It is my understanding that there is currently a program underway in which the police authorities of major cities are getting Federal security clearances, which is a very unique new program. It is not a classified program. It is known. It was spoken about publicly at a meeting I was at yesterday. So that there is more ease of passing on that information to people.

For instance, it is hard to believe that when Governor Gilmore was Governor of Virginia it would have been a Federal crime for an agent to share certain classified information with him because he did not have the clearance. Now it certainly seems to me that the mayor and the chief of police of New York ought to be able to get classified information. So I think they are working in that direction but not through this center. I think those questions are better directed at the FBI and Governor Ridge to see if they are upping their efforts to get clearances and find ways

And finally let me say just one other thing that was inherently contained in your question. I have long believed that the balance between protecting sources and methods and protecting the American people from great harm has to be rationalized in some way. Where I come out on it is simply this. I believe that if we have a specific threat, as opposed to what we have right now, a specific threat based on good information of a major terrorist action against a particular city during a particular time frame, that sources and methods ought to be compromised if necessary to protect that population from that injury. That is a debate you will have to have within the community.

Senator AKAKA. Governor Gilmore.

Mr. GILMORE. Senator, if I may just add, in my discussions with Admiral Abbott he has indicated that they in fact are starting a program where they are beginning to go through the process of clearing the governors and clearing of major law enforcement key personnel in the respective States. Then you begin to put in all the safeguarding rules, all the penalties for violation of that, all of the training that goes along with that. I think that it can work and should work.

I think that if a politician in a State, the same thing as a politician at the Federal level-politicians are politicians, if they reveal

information in order to gain some type of political advantage and so on, there ought to be penalties involved with that. I think once you set up this kind of structure then everybody is going to understand what the rules are and how they are supposed to adhere to them.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you so much for your responses. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator.

Before I let this distinguished panel go I just want to follow up on the issue of how the new center would interact with State and local law enforcement officials, which both of you have talked about as well as several of the members of this panel. Recently in Portland, Maine, for example, the local police detained a foreign national who was visiting on a tourist visa who was spotted photographing an oil tank farm on the Portland waterfront, obviously an action of some concern. The local police, however, had an extremely difficult time getting information from the FBI about whether or not this individual was on any watch list or if his actions were a matter of concern. So I think we still have long ways to go as far as information sharing and developing the trust among various agencies at various levels of government.

Do you think that State and local law enforcement officials should have direct access to this new center or a way to somehow tap into information directly? Senator Rudman.

Mr. RUDMAN. I do not, Senator Collins. I think that the nature of the information they will be having to compile, their analysis product based on foreign and domestic intelligence, cannot be shared on a demand basis. What I do believe is what you intended in the Department of Homeland Security legislation. I believe that DHS primarily is going to become responsible for liaison, both information technology and verbally, with local law enforcement. I believe that they ought to be on the front line, and I expect they will have people in this new center who can pass on to the chief of police of Portland, Maine that this person is on a watch list and do it in real time.

But I think that is the way it ought to be done. I think you have got to limit access to this product. Not limit access to those who need it, but limit general access to it. Then you get into some issues that I think would cause a lot of problems.

Chairman COLLINS. Governor Gilmore.

Mr. GILMORE. If I understand Senator Rudman, I think that our commission would disagree. We believe that there ought to be colocated people, representative people from States and local organizations to begin to understand the nature of what is going on in the States. There is a serious cultural problem here. We identified it years ago. It remains to this day. It is the inherent feeling of Federal law enforcement authorities that they are superior.

The reason that they think they are superior is because they are better funded by the Congress than local law enforcement agencies are able to be. They have, therefore, access to more people and more resources. Therefore they think they are superior.

But that is balanced by the fact that local law enforcement people are in more places, seeing more things across this Nation each and every day. Therefore, the Federal authorities are not superior.