Richard Clark testified that the FBI, quote, "never provided analysis to us even when we asked for it, and I don't think that throughout that 10-year period we had any analytical capability of what was going on in this country." In investigations, the report concluded that the FBI was unable to identify and monitor effectively the extent of activity by al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups operating in the United States. While in the United States, a number of hijackers successfully eluded FBI detection despite their interaction with subjects of FBI counterterrorism investigations. Even after the CIA watch-listed al-Midhar and al-Hazmi on August 23, 2001, there was less than and all-out investigative effort to locate what amounted to two bin Laden associated terrorists in the United States during a period when the terrorist threat level had escalated to a peak level. While the Inquiry found, in its own review of CIA and FBI documents, information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the hijackers while they were in the United States, CIA and FBI officials were unable to definitively address the extent or the nature of such support despite the serious national security implications of that information. The FBI Director acknowledged that it was the Joint Inquiry's report that brought some of these facts, which were found in CIA and FBI documents, to his attention. The Inquiry referred this material to the FBI and CIA for further investigation, and the report notes that only recently and in part due to the Inquiry's focus on the issue did the CIA and FBI strengthen efforts in those areas. In closing, let me underscore the importance of the thought conveyed by the title of today's hearing, "Perspectives on 9/11: Building Effectively on Hard Lessons." Those of us associated with the Joint Inquiry are convinced that there is indeed much to be learned from the story of September 11th, both for the Intelligence Community and for our Nation. The lessons are hard, they are bitter, and they are tragic, but the importance of their message is undeniable. They are our clearest road back to a far safer and brighter future for all Americans. The Joint Inquiry's report can, I believe, serve as an excellent road map for that journey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be, obviously, glad to answer any questions. Chairman Cox. Thank you, Ms. Hill. [The statement of Ms. Hill follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF MS. ELEANOR HILL Good afternoon, Chairman Cox, Ranking Member Turner, and Members of the Committee. I very much appreciate your invitation to discuss with you the Final Report of the Joint Inquiry by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That Inquiry focused on the activities of the Intelligence Community as they related to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 and, as such, is clearly relevant to this Committee's focus on homeland security. Several Members of this Committee-Mr. Goss, Ms. Harman, Mr. Boehlert, and Mr. Gibbons-also served on the Joint Inquiry. Their considerable familiarity with these issues will also, I am sure, prove tremendously helpful as this Committee considers how to best apply the lessons of September 11th to the challenges of homeland security. As you know, on July 24, 2003, an unclassified version of the Joint Inquiry's Report, numbering over 800 pages in length, was publicly released. That Report was the culmination of a tremendous, and unprecedented, amount of joint work and joint effort by two permanent Congressional Committees, including: the review of 500,000 pages of relevant documents; investigative interviews and discussions with over 600 individuals; testimony and evidence produced at 13 closed sessions and 9 public hearings; and nearly seven months of difficult and often frustrating declassification negotiations with the Intelligence Community. I served as the Joint Inquiry's staff director and, as a result, this report, and the investigation and hearings on which it is based, consumed most of my focus and my life for the last year. It was, in all respects, an intense and extraordinary experience for me. I am, in short, grateful and glad to have been a part of the Committees' historic and bipartisan effort to move the country forward, in a constructive manner, from the trauma of September 11th. From the outset, the Inquiry faced considerable, even daunting, challenges: a huge amount of investigative work in a limited timeframe, undertaken by two House and Senate Committees with a single nonpartisan investigative staff, during a period of unquestioned national crisis, emotional upheaval, and open skepticism about the effectiveness and objectivity of a Congressional review. Given all those circumstances, any chance for success would have been impossible absent strong, steady, and committed leadership at the helm: - in the House, we were fortunate to have Chairman Goss and Ranking Member Pelosi, and, in the Senate, Chairman Graham and Vice Chairman Shelby. I cannot tell you how important their support and their determination to work together was to our ability to uncover the facts and to achieve bipartisan consensus on recommendations of substance for needed reform. Let me say just a few words about Chairman Goss, who also serves on this Committee, and with whom I have had the great pleasure and privilege of working throughout the course of the Joint Inquiry. Much of the Inquiry's success can be credited to his hard work, his unflagging support, and his strong commitment to "follow the facts" thoroughly and objectively throughout the entire effort. In short, he made my job far easier and I thank him again for his help and his support. Let me now turn to the unclassified version of the Joint Inquiry's Report, which is the focus of today's hearing. As I mentioned, the Report is quite lengthy and sets forth numerous findings and recommendations, along with a considerable amount of supporting discussion and factual detail. My testimony is intended to highlight, as you requested, some of the Report's central themes and some, but not necessarily all, of the findings and recommendations. For a more complete picture, I encourage the Members of this Committee to read the findings, discussion, and recommendations sections of the Report. Taken together, those findings and recommendations reflect, to a large degree, the Joint Inquiry's three principal goals: Determine what the Intelligence Community knew or should have known prior to September 11th, regarding the international terrorist threat to the United States, including the scope and nature of any possible terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests; - Identify any systemic problems that may have impeded the Intelligence Community's ability to discover and prevent the September 11th attacks in advance; and Make recommendations for reform to correct those problems and thus improve the Intelligence Community's ability to prevent similar attacks in the future. Factual Findings The Report begins with a series of "factual findings", which speak to the question of what the Intelligence Community did or did not know, or should have known, prior to September 11th, 2001, regarding the attacks. Supported by discussions of specific facts, documents, and testimony compiled by the Inquiry, these findings include: - While the Community had amassed a great deal of valuable intelligence regarding Usama Bin Ladin and his terrorist activities, none of it identified the time, place and specific nature of the September 11th attacks. While there was no single "smoking gun", the Report confirms that the Community had various other information that was both relevant and significant; -During the spring and summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community experienced a significant increase in the information indicating that Bin Ladin intended to strike United States interests in the very near future. The National Security Agency (NSA), for example, reported at least 33 communications indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack in 2001. Senior U.S Government officials were advised by the Intelligence Community on June 28 and July 10, 2001, for example, that the attacks were expected to "have dramatic consequences on governments or cause major casualties" and that "[a]ttack preparations have been made." An August 2001 Assessment by the DCI's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) reported: "for every UBL operative that we stop, an estimated 50 operatives slip through our loose net undetected. Based on recent arrest, it is clear that UBL is building up a worldwide infrastruc ture which will allow him to launch multiple and simultaneous attacks with little or no warning". Some Community personnel described the 2001 increase in threat reporting as unprecedented; Beginning in 1998 and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received a modest, but relatively steady stream of reporting that indicated the possibility of terrorist attacks within the United States. A 1998 intelligence report, for example, suggested "UBL is planning attacks in the U.S. I says plans are to attack in NY and Washington. Information mentions an attack in Washington probably against public places. UBL probably places a high priority on conducting attacks in the U.S. ...CIA has little information on UBL operatives in the U.S." In August 2001, a closely held intelligence report for senior government officials advised that al-Qa'ida members had resided in or traveled to the United States for years and maintained a support structure here. The same report included, among other things, FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with hijackings or other forms of attacks as well as information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of Bin Ladin supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives. Nonetheless, the predominant Community view, during the spring and summer of 2001, was that the threatened Bin Ladin attacks would occur overseas. The FBI's Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, for example, testified that, in 2001, he thought there was a "98 percent" chance that the attack would be overseas; - From at least 1994, the Community had received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons. In 1998, for example, information was received about a Bin Ladin operation that would involve flying an explosive-laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and, in summer 2001, about a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy from an airplane or crash an airplane into it. There was also information suggesting Bin Ladin's interest in targeting civil aviation within the United States. In 1998, for example, intelligence information indicated that "...member of UBL was planning operations against U.S. targets. Plans to hijack U.S. aircraft proceeding well. Two individuals [ -] had successfully evaded checkpoints in a dry run at a NY airport." This kind of information did not, however, stimulate any specific Intelligence Community assessment of, or collective U.S. government reaction to, the possible use of aircraft as weapons in a terrorist attack; Although, prior to September 11th, relevant information that is significant in retrospect regarding the attacks was available to the Intelligence Community, the Community failed to focus on that information and to appreciate its collective significance in terms of a probable terrorist attack. As a result, the Report concludes that the Community missed opportunities to disrupt the September 11th plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers; to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States, and to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack. The Report details the information which the Community failed to capitalize on, including: - information, which lay dormant within the Community for as long as 18 months, that two Bin Ladin associated terrorists would likely travel to the United States. The two were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who would ultimately be among the hijackers that crashed American Flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11th. Although the CIA knew in January 2000 of al-Mihdhar's likely travel to the United States and in March 2000 of travel to the United States by al-Hazmi, the CIA missed repeated opportunities to act on this information and did not watch list those individuals until August 23, 2001. Despite providing the FBI with other, less critical information about the Malaysia meeting of al Qa'ida associates attended by the hijackers, the CIA did not advise the FBI of their travel to the U.S. until August 23, 2001. The DCI acknowledged in his testimony that CIA personnel "did not recognize the implications of the information about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar that they had in their files". A CIA analyst told the Inquiry that he did not tell New York FBI agents, whom he met with in June 2001, about al-Mihdhar's and alHazmi's travel to the United States, because the information "did not mean anything" to him, since he was interested in terrorist connections to Yemen; during the summer of 2000, a longtime FBI counterterrorism informant had numerous contacts with hijackers al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, while they were living in San Diego, California. The same FBI informant apparently had more limited contact with a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour, in December 2000. The San Diego FBI office, which handled the informant, did not receive, prior to September 11th, any of the intelligence information on al-Mihdhar or al-Hazmi that the CIA had as early as January 2000 and that FBI headquarters had in August 2001. The FBI agent responsible for the informant testified that, had he had such information, he would have canvassed sources, found the hijackers, and "given them the full court press? in terms of investigation and surveillance. He believes he could have uncovered the hijackers" future plans through investigative work. The Report concludes that "the informant's contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the Intelligence Community's best chance to unravel the September 11th plot; - information indicating, prior to September 11th, the existence of an al-Qa'ida support network inside the United States. Consistent with that information, the Report illustrates not only the reliance of at least some of the hijackers on the potential support network, but also the ease with which they operated despite the FBI's pre- September 11th domestic coverage. While former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger testified that the FBI had advised policymakers that “al-Qa'ida had limited capacity to operate in the United States and [that] any presence here was under [FBI] surveillance", the Report confirms that at least some of the hijackers operated well within the scope of the FBI's coverage of radical Islamic extremists within the United States and yet completely eluded FBI detection. Several hijackers, including Hani Hanjour, Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and Khalid al-Mihdhar may have had contact with a total of 14 people who had come to the FBI's attention during counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigations prior to September 11, 2001. Four of those fourteen were the subjects of active FBI investigations during the time the hijackers were in the United States. In one of those cases, the FBI closed the investigation despite the individual's contacts with other subjects of counterterrorism investigations and despite reports concerning the individual's ties to suspect organizations. In another case, the FBI closed its investigation of one of the hijackers' contacts during a phone interview, after the individual said it would be a "strain" to travel to Los Angeles for a personal interview and declined to give the FBI his home address; - the July 2001 "Phoenix Electronic Communication", in which an FBI agent expressed concerns that there was a coordinated effort underway by Bin Ladin to send students to the United States for civil aviation training. In the EC, the agent expressed his suspicion that this was an effort to establish a cadre of individuals in civil aviation who would conduct future terrorist activity. Despite the high threat level in the summer of 2001, this communication generated almost no interest at FBI headquarters or at the FBI's New York field office. In fact, one of the individuals named in the Phoenix EC was arrested in 2002 at an al-Qa'ida safehouse in Pakistan with Abu Zubaida. The Report concludes that the Phoenix EC, produced by an FBI field agent rather than a "seasoned" Intelligence Community analyst, was the best example of the creative, imaginative and aggressive analysis of relevant intelligence that this review has found; - the investigation and arrest, in August 2001, of Zacarias Moussaoui, whom Minneapolis FBI agents suspected was involved in a hijacking plot, possibly involving "a larger conspiracy" to seize control of an airplane. At the time, CIA stations were advised that Moussaoui was a "suspect airline suicide attacker" "who might be involved in a larger plot to target airlines traveling from Europe to the U.S." The FBI agents investigating Moussaoui knew nothing about the Phoenix Communication or al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. The FBI agent who wrote the Phoenix Communication had never heard about Moussaoui or the two future hijackers. Neither FBI headquarters nor the DCI's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) linked the information about Moussaoui to the elevated threat warnings in the summer of 2001, to the Phoenix Communication's suspicions about Bin Ladin's interest in civil aviation training or to information available on August 23, 2001, that two Bin Ladin operatives had entered the United States; and - information linking Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM), now believed to be the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, to Bin Ladin, to terrorist plans to use aircraft as weapons, and to terrorist activity in the United States. CIA documents in June 2001 indicated that KSM “was recruiting persons to travel to the United States and engage in planning terrorist-related activity here. [-], these persons would be 'expected to establish contact with individuals already living there.'" The documents also noted that KSM “continued to travel frequently to the United States, including as recently as May 2001". The Report concludes that this information did not “mobilize" the Community and that the "Community devoted few analytic or operational resources to tracking KSM or understanding his activities. Coordination within the Community was irregular at best, and the little information that was shared was usually forgotten or dismissed." His role in the September 11th attacks was a "surprise" to the Community and the CIA and FBI were unable to confirm whether he had in fact been traveling to the United States in the months before September 11th. Systemic Findings The Report also includes sixteen "systemic findings" which identify and explain those systemic weaknesses that hindered the Intelligence Community's counterterrorism efforts prior to September 11th. Some of these findings address specific shortcomings in various aspects of Intelligence Community counterterrorist efforts, such as the inability of the Community to develop and use human sources to penetrate the al-Qa'ida inner circle; the Community's excessive reliance on foreign liaison services; difficulties with FBI applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance; a reluctance to develop and implement new technical capabilities aggressively; a shortage of language specialists and languagequalified field officers and backlogs in materials awaiting translations; and a reluctance to track terrorist funding and close down terrorist financial support networks. Many of the systemic findings relate, in whole or in part, to three problem areas that, in my view, are critically important and repeatedly surfaced throughout the course of the Inquiry: a lack of access to relevant information; a lack of adequate focus on the terrorist threat to the domestic United States; and a lack of sufficient quality in both analytic and investigative efforts. Lack of Access Even the best intelligence will prove worthless if our Intelligence Community is unable to deliver that intelligence to those who need it in time for them to act on it. The Report finds that within the Intelligence Community, agencies did not adequately share relevant counterterrorism information for a host of reasons, including differences in missions, legal authorities, and agency cultures. Serious problems in information sharing also persisted between Intelligence Community agencies and other federal agencies as well as state and local authorities. Unquestionably, this breakdown in communication deprived those other entities, as well as the Intelligence Community, of access to potentially valuable information in the "war" against Bin Ladin. The Report contains numerous examples of these problems. The information on al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi's travel to the United States, despite numerous opportunities, never reached the San Diego FBI in time for them to capitalize on their informant's contacts with the two hijackers. Ironically, the CIA employee who, in January 2000, briefed FBI personnel about al-Mihdhar, but not about his visa and potential travel to the United States, told the Inquiry that his assignment, at the time, was to fix problems "in communicating between the CIA and the FBI". The FBI agent responsible for the informant, in his testimony, candidly described information sharing problems between the FBI and CIA: "If I had to rate it on a ten-point scale, I'd give them a 2 or 1.5 in terms of sharing information....Normally,...you have some information you want the Agency to check on. You end up writing it up, sending it back through electronic communications or teletype,...or memo...And then the Bureau, FBI headquarters, runs it across the street to the Agency. And then, maybe six months, eight months, a year later, you might get some sort of response.' Prior to September 11th, the Phoenix EC was not shared with the FBI agents handling Zacarias Moussaoui, or with the FBI agent whose informant knew that alHazmi was taking flight training in Arizona, or even with the FAA. In fact, FAA officials first learned of the Phoenix EC from the Joint Inquiry in early 2002. The FAA also did not receive all of the intelligence reporting on the possible use of aircraft as terrorist weapons. Beyond the failure to watchlist al-Mihdhar and alHazmi, the CIA also did not provide the State Department with almost 1500 terrorism-related intelligence reports until after September 11, 2001. Other non-intelligence federal agencies as well as state and local authorities complained about their lack of access to relevant intelligence information. Even Intelligence community analysts complained about their inability to have access to raw, but highly relevant, intelligence information held within other intelligence community agencies. Lack of Focus Even in instances where relevant information was available, there was a lack of sufficient focus on the Bin Ladin threat to the domestic United States. The Report concludes that the U.S. foreign intelligence agencies paid inadequate attention to the potential for a domestic attack and that, at home, the counterterrorism effort suffered from the lack of an effective domestic intelligence capability. The Report found gaps between NSA's coverage of foreign communications and the FBI's coverage of domestic communications that suggested a lack of sufficient attention to the domestic threat. There was no comprehensive counterterrorist strategy for combating the threat posed by Bin Ladin and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was "either unwilling or unable to marshal the full range of Intelligence Community resources to combat the growing threat to the United States." |