a Congresswoman from my home State of Virginia, a good friend to me and Roxanne, and someone that we rely on very much.

So, thank you very much, Congresswoman, for being here.

Mr. Chairman, as of course you know, and for the record, this Commission that we have, that has been established, your Commission on this advisory Commission to the Congress on terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and domestic response capabilities, was established by you, your leadership and that of this committee, all the way back in January of 1999. At that time, as I think the Chairman said, the thought was somewhat theoretical, but the truth was that the Congress and particularly the leadership that you provide was very concerned about the Nation's status and ability to respond to a terrorist attack, and, therefore, the Commission was established.

We, by statute, are required to report December 15th every year. We, in fact, did report on December 15th of the years 1999, 2000, and completed all of our work and sent to the printer our last statutory report to be published on December 15th; but it was done in late August, when of course the September 11th attack occurred. Then under your proposal, your leadership, our commission was extended an additional two years. We are now coming up, Mr. Chairman, on the end of the fourth year, and we have one additional year to go under the present status.

I want to thank you very much for your leadership. I have testified before your committee before, and other committees. You have been the person who has really focused attention on this, Congressman Weldon, and I want to thank you very much for your leadership in this. We look to you as our key contact in the Congress on these critical issues, particularly involving localities and states in a national strategy.

The panel composition, as everyone knows, is not a Commission that is traditional in Washington, D.C., of classic insiders of the typical blue ribbon commission. This Commission is established by working men and women who actually go out there and deal with these issues each and every day as a strong representation from fire, police, rescue, emergency services, as well as state leadership, local leadership, people from the intelligence community, retired general officers, a very good mix of people who would actually have to deal with many of these issues.

Ray Downey was a member of our Commission for years, the top leader of the New York Fire Department. He served faithfully with this Commission, and was unfortunately killed during the attacks on the World Trade Center, on September 11th. But others have stood in the place of those who have moved on to public leadership or who have passed away. And I think that the work we are doing continues to be very instrumental.

We have pointed out that all events are local, that all-hazards approaches work best, that there are policy and organizational issues that have to be addressed, not just simply more money and more technology, but cultural and organizational and policy issues that must be dealt with; and we have done that with the assistance of the RAND Corporation. This Commission has asked a major research organization to staff our Commission, and the RAND Cor

poration has done this from the very beginning and continues to do so to this day.

Our first report issued in 1999 was an assessment of the threat. At that time, we assessed that there was less possibility of an attack by a weapon of mass destruction in this country, but the Commission's deliberations took the issue so seriously that we knew we could not take it off the table and that it had to be up on the public agenda for discussion.

On the other hand, we concluded that the chances of a conventional attack, the hijacking of a train, the hijacking of an airplane, the explosion of a bomb were very highly probable inside the homeland. This was not considered in 1999 to be something that was very much on the forefront of discussion at that time.

In the second year, in the year 2000, we did major policy work. We recommended that there be a national strategy. We pointed out that a Federal strategy is not a national strategy; that a national strategy requires people at the Federal, State, and local level to be coordinated in order to do proper preparation, prevention, and response. We recommended in that year of 2000 that there be a special committee, or consolidation of committees, within the Congress in order to be able to provide proper oversight in enabling legislation for any potential Federal effort, that there be emphasis on intelligence sharing, health care, and, above all, national standards so that we could begin to organize ourselves so that we were prepared to respond as a nation. Our focus was on State and local, health and medical, immigration and border in the third year, cyber security and the use of the military.

Mr. Chairman, if you-those who read our reports and the entire body of work over all these years, all will see a constant focus on the concern for the civil liberties of the people of the United States. The enemy would like to push this country into a position where we are so effective in our response that we begin to diminish what we are as Americans, and so there has been a constant concern for this issue. The introductory letter in the second report, in the year 2000, focuses on this very much.

With that preliminary, Mr. Chairman, the current deliberations that we are doing in Year four, we are just about to complete our work. In the report that we are publishing on December 15th, we will focus chapters on the strategy and structure necessary for the government to be in a position to respond-in short, the national strategy, the types of organizational efforts that have to be made, the use of the military, health and medical, critical infrastructure protection, and agroterrorism. Those are the concerns that I think our Commission is focusing on right now.

With respect to the issue of strategy and structure of government, I have a bit of an announcement to make in this forum this morning, because the Congress yesterday has just passed the Department of Homeland Security bill; and it is going to require further discussions in organization, and in the weeks ahead, additional legislation will no doubt come forward.

We have concluded that we wish to release the principal recommendations in the area of strategy and structure today to the Congress in our advisory capacity. A copy of that is at the desks of the Members, and I know that the staff people will make it

available to them as necessary. Of course, there are Members who are here who will see this report today as being issued in advance of the December 15th report because of the timetable of the Congress.

Very quickly, there are some areas that we are recommending. We are recommending an all-source fusion and analysis center, as you have suggested, Mr. Chairman, so that we can begin to share information and bring information together which is properly and lawfully collected, but across different lines, all the intelligence organizations coming together in order to be able to share information. There has been a lot of discussion about this, of course. And then, in addition to that, we are recommending a separate component, a separate, additional agency to do domestic intelligence gathering with respect to terrorist and foreign activities here in the United States; and that that be moved from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into a new organization.

This is a very important discussion that we have had. This subject has been lengthily discussed in our Commission this year. But the concern is that this work must be done and must be done effectively, and therefore this Commission is making that recommendation.

We will have additional recommendations of course within this report, but we are also focusing a great deal of attention on the need for the Congress to establish a separate authorizing committee and related appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over Federal programs and authority for combating terrorism and homeland security. The Commission, over the years, continues to be concerned about the proliferation of-the large number of committees, particularly in appropriations, that the new Department will have to address; and there is concern that there will be crosscutting pressures and this will retard the ability of the new Department of Homeland Security to get off the ground.

We have recommended continuously and continue to recommend either a joint committee of the Senate and the House, one committee, to do oversight and appropriations, or at least a separate committee in each House to do the appropriations and to do this work, as opposed to the many, many committees that are in existence today.

Once again, I would request that this Advance Recommendation on Strategy and Structure be included in the record together with the formal statement that we have made.

Mr. WELDON. Without objection.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on page 59.]

Governor GILMORE. Mr. Chairman, in addition to that, we are continuing to work on the issue of the use of the military, particularly focusing, of course, on the direction of the United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM). We have had direct meetings with NORTHCOM. We are very happy with what NORTHCOM is telling us about what they foresee their role to be.

The Chairman will recall that we have focused a lot of attention over the years on sequencing of responders, focusing first on local responders, as in fact we saw both in New York and in northern

Virginia at the Pentagon-fire, police, rescue, emergency services— and the need for them to be enabled to do that work.

A second then would be to follow with the National Guard, and basically a homeland organization of the people from the community that people are used to seeing, if in fact that becomes necessary to put in military people, together of course with specialty units from the regular military, but to bring in the regular military only as a last resort and at the end. We believe that this is the proper way to preserve the structure and feeling of the American people towards the potential response and not to overreact by too much of the use, or too quickly, the use of the military.

We will be focusing our attention on health and medical issues, a serious concern about the potential for a bioterrorism attack. We recommended the national pharmaceutical stockpile usage, we are recommending that it be exercised. We focused our attention on the potential for our national laboratories to be prepared for bioterrorist attack and vaccine strategy.

On critical infrastructure, there are a lot of concerns about this that we will bring forward to the Congress on December 15th, particularly issues regarding Federal reimbursement for any types of costs that are incurred by States, localities, private sector, for improvements to infrastructure.

There is concern because there needs to be constant interoperability of communications, particularly telecommunications. I would point out the issues that are before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) right now and before the Committees of the Congress regarding spectrum and the ability to distribute that spectrum in such a way as to enhance inter operability-Federal, State, and local.

And, in addition to that, we are focusing a great deal of attention on the fact that most of the critical infrastructure is in private hands and that electrical companies, water companies critical, focusing infrastructure if there is a major attack-will need to be able to interoperably communicate as well.

These are concerns that we are bringing forward, including agroterrorism and the need to be prepared to maintain the food supply chain in the case of a major attack.

Mr. Chairman, the second issue that I would bring forward today is the one that the Committee has asked us to specifically address, the types of equipment needed, and policies and procedures and interoperability of entities and common training requirements. It goes to the essential issue that we still have to answer, Mr. Chairman, as a nation, and that is, what is readiness? Until we define what that is and we understand the level of risk that inevitably we must run, only then can we begin to focus our attention on what is necessary to reduce that risk to a minimum while maintaining our civil liberties. That is the principal policy goal that the Congress and the administration will need to reach towards.

How do we best set our priorities? Mr. Chairman, it is not possible to buy everything that people want to sell to the government. Everybody is coming forward with systems; some work and some don't. But most do work and most do enhance security, but it will be impossible to do everything. So we have to define what the pri

orities are and what we have to do by way of preparing and purchasing in homeland security.

The second point which you have addressed and which we believe needs to be addressed is the issue of national standards. There will be a need for the new Department working hand in hand with the two branches of government to set national standards on how to train, equip, and plan for and coordinate responses. We have been in communication of course with the Office of Homeland Security. We are aware of the excellent work that they are doing. And my friend. Tom Ridge, from your home State is ably heading up the Office of Homeland Security. We would point out that in our previous report in 2000, we suggested that there needed to be a clear set of priorities for research and development and training. We believe that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy should aid in setting these types of standards. We believe that local responders reported then and continue today to report that equipment that they purchased doesn't meet specifications that may be useful for interoperability in an overall national strategy; and without national direction on this and setting national standards, we still may end up with people showing up at the sites with very able equipment that can't work together or talk to each other. And that is the simple reality until these kinds of standards are set.

We have to continue to plan for interoperability and long-term research and training. National standards is a key in this matter. Nationwide compatibility, dual and multipurpose applications, all these things have to be taken into consideration.

In closing. Mr. Chairman, these functions that we recommend now are both two years old and still need to be performed and more urgently than ever, but we still have a long way to go to achieve any coherence in standards and testing, particularly for first responder equipment and communications capability. And Mr. Chairman, as you have led this topic over the years, you have pointed this out, the locals are going to be the responders; and that is the reality in a nation as large as this and as diverse as this. It is still the case that the standards that we are seeing today are only what the vendors say are the capabilities of their wares, and that is it. And this is a serious concern and will require congressional and administration leadership to do this.

We recognize the efforts of the Inter Agency Board (IAB) for Equipment Standardization and interoperability, and the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory, which is in your home State, Mr. Chairman, and the Technical Support Working Group. These are good efforts that are under way, but they won't be enough at the level of current resources.

In short, Mr. Chairman, we strongly urge this leadership in preparation and prioritization of standards. And all of this can be done, Mr. Chairman. All of this can be done. We can make all these policies and do this organization, and we can set all this and we can do it consistent with the Commission's overarching concern on the impact of any legal policy or process changes that we see on our civil rights and civil liberties. These can exist side by side, and we are confident, with the leadership of this administration and this committee, that that will be achieved.