Group. Those efforts will not, however, be nearly enough, at least not at the level of current resources.

For training, the panel is encouraged that the majority of Federal training programs, at least those currently in FEMA and DOJ, will apparently be combined in the new DHS. Nevertheless, other Federal agencies-EPA, DOE, DoD, DHHS as examples-will continue to conduct training that will need to conform to a set of national training standards. That effort has not yet been undertaken, but it should be required on an urgent basis.

Fifth Report-A Return to Normalcy

The Commission will end its five years of work on behalf of the Congress with its final report on December 15, 2003 to the Congress and the President.

Mister Chairman, in our second report in 2000, we recommended a Director of Homeland Security in the Executive Office of the President to develop a national strategy, and to direct its implementation among the array of cabinet departments and agencies. We recommended that the Director have great authority over the Federal bureaucracy, including budget certification authority. We did not recommend a separate Department of Homeland Security because of concerns that delays resulting from setting up the new Department would slow the implementation of the national strategy. It has been decided that the advantages of a Department organization outweigh that risk, and our goal is to assist the new Department and the federal, state, and local governments by strategic thinking on Homeland Security.

We believe that the national goal must be to implement a true national strategy that assesses the true risk to the nation and reasonably prepares for those risks. Complete security is not possible against a stealth terrorist attack, but a good national strategy can reduce that risk, and direct our resources to the correct priorities. Only then can we manage the costs of Homeland Security and know the money we are spending is effective within a national strategy.

We must then have a frank dialogue with the American people that all risk cannot be eliminated. We must decide what roles are appropriate for federal, state, and local governments, the private sector and the people themselves.

Then we should return to normalcy, and understand our definition of normal. Normalcy will never again be an unguarded or inattentive state, but we also must decide how much is enough, and continue on with the array of priorities we will pursue as a nation. Defining preparedness and the roles of states and localities will be a key part of our Fifth Report.

We also will draw attention to the need to maintain our Civil Freedoms as we make the nation more secure. Our traditional values of liberty cannot be balanced against or traded off for security. We also must be cautious that those responsible for security do not simply redefine away our freedoms in the name of security. It is preparedness that must be defined, not our definition of freedom that has already gained its meaning from the blood of American patriots, including those that died on September 11, 2001. This, too, will be discussed in the final report this December.

Conclusion

The Advisory Panel will continue to be relentless in pursuing appropriate solutions to these difficult issues, even if our recommendations are controversial and cross some "turf" boundaries. We will always-always-consider as an overarching concern the impact of any legal, policy, or process changes on our civil rights and liberties. Our Constitution, our laws, our judicial system, our culture, our history all combine to make our way of life unique in all the world. Thank you again for this opportunity.

Chairman Cox. Thank you, Governor. Thank you both for your outstanding testimony, for the work that you have done in preparation for it and for your assistance to the Congress and to the President in our work.

Ms. Hill, one of the Joint Inquiry's recommendations that you cited in your own testimony today is for, quote, full development within the Department of Homeland Security of an effective, allsource terrorism information fusion center.

That all-source center is supposed to have continuing to quote the recommendation—full and timely access to all counterterrorism related intelligence information, including raw supporting data as needed.

We share that view. I stressed in my opening statement that I believe this is a bipartisanship view of virtually every member of this committee. That is what we think we legislated, having read the statute many times over, in creating the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate within the new Department. We want that mandate implemented, and we are somewhat troubled by the implications that perhaps it isn't.

Your testimony notes, for example, creation of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, TTIC, not within the Department of Homeland Security but as a nonstatutory DCI-supervised interagency joint venture.

Can you outline the reasons that the Joint Inquiry specifically recommended full development of an effective, all-source terrorism information fusion center, quote, within the Department of Homeland Security?

Ms. HILL. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the reason for a fusion center, wherever it is, was the numerous examples, in the hearings and our work, of the failure to bring all of that information into one place to look at the big picture, to connect the dots, to analyze it the way it should be analyzed and then to get it to the people who need it.

So any fusion center is hopefully designed to do that. The reason, as I recall that-the recommendation speaks specifically to the one in the Department of Homeland Security-was because at the time the committees considered these recommendations that had been statutorily enacted. They were aware that there was a statutory provision to set that up in the Department of Homeland Security. I think the National inclination was Congress has decided that is where it is going to go. If it goes there, it needs to be effective. I think a large part of the thrust of the recommendation was not just that you should have it at Homeland Security but that whatever is set up there should be done the right way, specifically, to include things like access to raw data, which had been a problem, and a whole host of other issues that we had heard about that were problems for the analytical community.

Chairman Cox. Now, I strongly support the use of TTIC as an interim step. I don't want us to drop a stitch while we are building something new at the Department of Homeland Security, and obviously TTIC is an executive creation without any Congressional authorization whatsoever. But it is filling a gap, and it is ensuring that we are doing things professionally, immediately not eventually, and there is some eventually when it comes to the creation of this brand new Cabinet department.

But my concern runs to the longer term, because the statute hasn't changed since you wrote your report. The very reason you made your recommendation, as you have just explained it, obtains today. The statute says the same thing now that it did then, the legal requirement is exactly the same now as it was then.

And so I am concerned now that there is a risk that the DCI, who has pledged his support to TTIC, is now going to have to provide support both to TTIC, and to whatever might go into Homeland Security. If we want a fusion center, having two of them doesn't exactly fit the bill, does it?

Ms. HILL. No. The whole point is to get it all in one place so we make sure that it is analyzed the right way and it is disseminated to the people who need it. I do want to just clarify that TTIC, as it exists now or is being talked about now, did not exist at the time the committees made this recommendation.

So they were making their recommendation based on what they saw as a huge problem pre-9/11 and knowing that the Congress had put in this provision about a fusion center at the Department of Homeland Security.

Chairman Cox. Well, I think all of us can agree, and it is a strong inference that I draw from your testimony, that we should not, if we are anxious to fuse intelligence data, create competing sources of focus of effort, that we should not draw Intelligence Community assistance in providing analysis of terrorists threat related information, and so on, to TTIC as well as to the Department and dilute that purpose.

Governor Gilmore, you have been not only spending the last several years studying counterterrorism and our counterterrorist capabilities, but you have also been a Governor of a State with major technological, economic and military significance from a standpoint of defending ourselves against terrorism.

You were one of the three States that the terrorists thought important enough to attack. The homeland security advisory system is supposed to give us strategic and, whenever possible, tactical advance warning of terrorist threats, but it has been criticized. I would like to have your views on whether the security advisory system is effective, on whether the color system which has been derided in some corridors is working, on whether this can be improved.

Mr. GILMORE. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the color code is a shorthand. It is intended to be a quick, simple way of communicating a simply concept of what exactly level the country is in at any particular point in time. It has been derided because it doesn't give any information to tell anybody what to do. That is accurate. And there is also a challenge too. And that is that as we go forward and we don't have information that leads us into a red situation or a highly dangerous situation, then we are in a constant yellow state, and so there are challenges on all of that.

It would be good to have a system that can convey the most information possible, if not to the general public, at least up and down the line to appropriate elected officials, people who would have responsibility, particularly in the communities, which means that you have to give good information, to the greatest extent you can, into the States and into the localities. It doesn't have to be something where you go on the radio and define it with a color code, but the best possible information should be given to the States and to the localities. This is the challenge.

There are cultural challenges. There are cultural challenges, by the way, in the fusion center. We recommended that and examined it in the year 2002. The challenge to it is cultural less than structural.

And likewise here with this type of response, the question is, what kind of information can you get into the hands of the people who need it under the people who are actually patrolling the chem

ical plants and patrolling the critical infrastructure areas and watching out for the streets.

To the greatest extent possible, we should give the best possible system to get the maximum information to them, and culturally there are obstacles to do that.

Chairman Cox. I appreciate that. One final question for Ms. Hill. The Joint Inquiry report notes that two of the 9/11 hijackers had numerous contacts with a longtime FBI informant, yet despite this and earlier information linking them to suspected al-Qaeda members no further action was taken to investigate, detain or question either of them.

Can you explain to us in this open setting, to the extent possible, the problems that the FBI encountered within its own structure, how these men were able to hide not only from our own intelligence but from paid informants within the Islamic community as well?

Ms. HILL. Well, let me just start out briefly, and it is a complicated story. But briefly, part of what the Inquiry found was that these two individuals, Mihdhar and Hazmi, were known to the CIA and other parts of the Intelligence Community as early as January of 2000, and there was information in January of 2000 that Mihdhar had a visa to come to the United States, would likely come here. That information, as best as we can tell, was not passed to the FBI, from the weight of the evidence the Inquiry found, until August of 2001.

The CIA had information in March, I believe, of 2000 that Mr. Hazmi had in fact traveled to the United States. That information, as best as we could tell, the weight of the evidence was that it was not passed to the FBI until August of 2001.

The informant had contacts with those two individuals in the year 2000, after that information was in the CIA. However, the San Diego office of the FBI did not know about those two individuals. They didn't know the full names of the individuals, they didn't know they were coming to the United States. They had no reason to be looking for them. The informant had given the names, the first names, of the two individuals to the FBI agent that was responsible for that informant. But according to the FBI, and according to the agent, there was no reason for them to focus on those two individuals. I believe the informant described them as young Saudi youths by first name only. The agent testified he never got their last names. In August, 2001, on August 23rd, when the FBI learned the full name of the these individuals and that they had come to the United States, there was an effort, an investigation by the FBI, to find them in the United States.

However, that effort did not entail tasking FBI informants for information about those two individuals. So the informant in San Diego was not asked at that point whether that informant knew those two individuals. And it also did not entail any information about them being sent the San Diego FBI office.

The agent in San Diego who was responsible for the informant testified that had that agent gotten those names at that point, even at that late point, the agent believes he could have found them. He believes he could have, through the informant and his other sources found those individuals. He also testified that had the CIA gotten that information to the FBI and had the FBI, in turn, gotten

it to their San Diego office back in the year 2000, that FBI agent in San Diego strongly believes that if he had had the names he would have tasked his sources, and he would have found them at the time living in San Diego. Because that office would have had the tremendous opportunity of having a long-time FBI informant having contacts with those two individuals, he thinks through that informant and through surveillance, both physical, electronic, whatever, he would have used the "full-court press" in investigative techniques on those two individuals, and he believes that he would have found them.

He believes that he would have had a very good chance to crack open what the plot was and what they were doing in this country. Obviously it didn't happen. He didn't have that information. The information never got to the San Diego FBI until after September 11th.

Chairman Cox. Well, I can't think of a more compelling illustration of why we need intelligence fusion and sharing of information within Washington between intelligence and law enforcement between Washington, State, local governments at all levels.

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner, is recognized for his questions.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Governor, you have been working on homeland security for about as long as anyone I know, and you have certainly been able to develop insights that many of us have not had the opportunity to develop. I think it is always helpful to us, even though I know this calls for some value judgment here, but it is always helpful to us if you can just share with us what you think might be the two or three or four or whatever is on your priority list of homeland security tasks, that you think we really need to get done as soon as possible to make this country more secure.

Where would you tell us to place our priorities? What needs to be done that is not being done? And I heard this same question posed the other day in the Senate committee where Chairman Cox and I were kindly invited to testify. The same question was posed to Senator Rudman and Richard Clarke, and I suspect you probably won't give the same answers, but it was insightful just to hear their views, and I would like to hear yours.

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Mr. GILMORE. Congressman, one could go burrow down into this issue a level and begin to address some of the specific vulnerabilities. Ports comes to mind. While our Commission doesn't think that it is a high likelihood that we would see a classic weapons of mass destruction used in this country, it is clear that we have to be very cautious about the issue, particularly of bioterrorism.

So one can go down and begin to address this, but-and you should, one should do that. But you arrive at a point where you begin to catalog lists of vulnerabilities. And this nation-any nation really-most authoritarian nations are not free from threat, much less free countries, such as the United States, and one as big as this country is.

So it seems to me that we have to focus on several more strategic points, and that comes down to the big question of trying to get everybody placed into a national strategy so we understand what