the problems with the FBI's data systems and electronic messaging and all of that.

Mr. DICKS. What is wrong with a phone call? What is wrong with picking up the phone and calling somebody if you have a very strong suspicion? Did he ever think about that? I know we live in an era of e-mail, but I think that sometimes people forget that you can pick up the phone and call your superior and say, why are we not doing something about this?

Ms. HILL. Well, I don't believe that he did that. And I think he would tell you, you know, that he felt he did what he could. It was about his theories. It was a theory to him. He was kind of saying, this is what it looks like to me, and sent it up with some recommendations. But I don't think

Mr. DICKS. We had a similar situation in Minneapolis, isn't that correct?

Ms. HILL. Well, Minneapolis was a little bit different. That relates to Moussaoui, the arrest of Mr. Moussaoui in Minneapolis. And the agents, they were very concerned that he might be involved in some sort of terrorist plot with airlines. And they went back and forth with FBI headquarters on the issue of whether or not they could get a warrant and whether or not they had enough on him to move forward under FISA, and there was a misconception of what they needed to allege under FISA. They spent a lot of time looking for some connections that they actually didn't need legally. So there was a lot of that back and forth and their request never went, as I remember, never went beyond the FBI to the Justice Department.

But the interesting thing about both of those cases, and what concerned I think our two committees, was that, number one, they both occurred in the summer of 2001, which was a time when there was a very high peak threat level for some sort of terrorist attack against U.S. interests.

The Phoenix agent did not know about Zacarias Moussaoui. The agents handling Zacarias Moussaoui didn't know about the Phoenix electronic communication. And neither of them knew about Mihdhar and Hazmi, before August, coming into this country. And, of course, the FBI didn't know that in June and July because they hadn't got the information from the CIA.

So, you know, what we found, and that is the classic example of it, is we found all of those pieces, these threads of information, that if somebody had been able to see the whole picture and put this together, you know, you would have known, here we have a huge threat. We have two guys, al-Qaeda associates, coming into this country. We have another suspicious individual in Arizona, we have a memo out of Phoenix saying that he believes bin Laden is sending people for civil aviation related training.

None of those people knew all of it, none of the people who had one piece knew what all of the others had, including the agent in California who had the informant. That informant knew, among other things, and told the FBI after September 11th, that, for instance, Mr. Hazmi was going to, of all places, Arizona for flight training, for civil aviation training.

And that is where the Phoenix agent-at that time was sitting there in July of 2001 and later, with that information. None of that

was connected. And Moussaoui wasn't connected to it. So, you know, we will never know what would have happened if they had put it all together. But they certainly would have been a lot closer to seeing the big picture than what history shows that they were. Mr. DICKS. What worries me here is you can have very good field work, but you have to have people in the supervisory level who take that information and act upon it. There have been so many situations in our history where we had the information but the people at the higher levels didn't respond to the information and didn't act and didn't do anything.

And, you know, first-President Bush I, the first thing he said after Desert Storm/Desert Shield, when the Iraqis attacked into Kuwait, was that it was not an intelligence failure, it was a failure of his administration to act because he was told by all of the leaders of the governments in the area that Saddam Hussein wouldn't make this attack. And even though we had the information, we didn't act on it.

So I bring this up, I think this is an important part of this committee's deliberations. We have got to get all of this information and do a better job of collecting, but you also have to have some people with judgment who analyze and then get it to their superi

ors to act upon.

And I think these examples that we discussed here show an example in this very important situation, where we had good information, but we didn't have people who acted on the information or didn't recognize the importance of the information, and I hope it is something that we continue to consider in our committee deliberations.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Cox. Thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Shays, is recognized for questions.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, thank you for conducting this hearing and thank you to our very distinguished witnesses.

When my National Security Subcommittee was holding hearings before September 11th, we had you, Governor, before our committee on more than one occasion, along with Hart, Rudman and Bremer, and all three of you agreed on the following: We have a terrorist threat. We need to develop a strategy to respond to the terrorist threat. And you only disagreed really on the nuances of how you reorganize, because you all said we needed to reorganize to implement that strategy. So we had a loud message from three very distinguished commissions.

My first question to you is: When we did reorganize, we basically did it before we really described what the threat was or developed a strategy, and do you think that we have been hindered and maybe didn't reorganize the way we should have because we did not do what we needed to do-in my judgment—which was state the strategy and state the threat and develop the strategy?

Mr. GILMORE. Yes, Congressman. I think that is a pretty good summary of where I think that strategically we may have fell behind a little bit. I would point out that there is still not a consensus yet as to the nature of the threat. Our Commission does not believe that threat of a classic weapon of mass destruction is as

great as frankly has been discussed in the newspapers and perhaps in this body as well.

But on the other hand, we have hedged. We have not ruled it out. We believe that the consequences would be so great that we have to at least take it into consideration. But the thrust of our Commission has been that we need to think more about what the capability, the true capability of the enemy is, and the true capability of the enemy is more along the lines of conventional weapons, an explosion, a bomb, hijacking a plane, hijacking a train, something of this nature, not a nuclear device or something of that nature here in the homeland.

But, yes, thinking through the strategy then lends itself I think very well to the proper type of structure that needs to go into place. Mr. SHAYS. I had hoped that having reorganized that the Department of Homeland Security would then, even though it seemed to follow, have stated threat analysis and its strategy, to my knowledge, this has not been done.

Ms. Hill, to your knowledge has this been done?

Ms. HILL. Mr. Shays, I am not-as I said, I have not been following what has been going on within the-what we looked at was what happened before 9/11. I haven't been following up on everything that has happened since.

Mr. SHAYS. I hear you. Governor?

Mr. GILMORE. Strategy or a threat assessment?

Mr. SHAYS. Well, both the threat assessment-to-I had hoped by now the Department of Homeland Security would have stated clearly what the threat was and what our strategy is. I have not yet seen a document that does either. Have you?

Mr. GILMORE. Well, there are about eight strategies, as you know, that are in print right now: Critical infrastructure, cyberterrorism, bioterrorism, a general overarching national strategy as well. So there is a lot of work.

Mr. SHAYS. Based upon a response to what they stated is the threat?

Mr. GILMORE. Not so much. I think that we probably do need to have a clearer thought through threat assessment. Again, we have taken a couple of cuts at it for you

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. GILMORE.—as a foundation. But that I think lends itself to— the strategy comes into clearer picture. It makes no sense to spend a lot of money preparing against something that is unlikely, when the very likely is right before you.

Mr. SHAYS. I hear you.

Ms. Hill, on the whole issue of fusion and the issue that we have one place, and it seems to me that should be the Department of Homeland Security. It is one of four pillars. It gets information from our security folks. But I happen to believe, and I am curious if you do as well, that had we just paid attention to what was said in public that we would have known about the terrorist attack?

I base that based on our hearings, but also my travels, particularly to Israel and the documents that we saw, the articles in the Egyptian newspaper about a debate among scholars before September 11th about whether it was a religious doctrine that would allow for a Muslim to, in fact, attack the Twin Towers.

So when we talk about fusion-and Governor Gilmore as wellwe are not just talking about Federal, State and local. We are also talking about providing public documentation in it as well.

Would you comment, Ms Hill?

Ms. HILL. I think that public documentation and open source information is very important. I mean, ideally you would want all of the information. Because, you know, we found there was a tremendous amount of information<. You know, we didn't have one single piece of intelligence that said: It is going to happen on September 11th with planes at the World Trade Center. We don't have that, but we had a whole lot of little pieces. We had a tremendous amount of information out there on the scope of the threat, on tactics. We knew these specific individuals, two of them at least, were coming into this country that ultimately ended up on these planes. So, you know, we did have a lot of information, but it wasn't brought together. And I think open source information is also critically important. And, you know, ideally if you had a fusion center, not only would that brings in intelligence information, but also law enforcement information.

As Governor Gilmore points out, and he is absolutely right, State and local law enforcement can be a tremendous source of valuable information.

Mr. GILMORE. The central problem-first of all, you are correct, Congressman Shays, absolutely correct, about the need for open source material. Not all intelligence is secret intelligence. In fact some of the best intelligence is what the enemy tells you.

But put that aside for a moment. The critical problem is culture. The problem is within the fusion center and within intelligence organizations we have ingrained in for many decades a reluctance to share information. Hopefully the fusion center, the TTIC or whatever format ultimately survives, will gain the esprit de corps, confidence and team work to give information back and forth and to bring in the States and locals.

The central concern we hear is the States and locals say we are happy to give the feds information, but it is a one-way street, after a while we get tired of it.

Mr. SHAYS. Would either of you comment on what former Senator Hart has done with the Council on Foreign Relations in the whole sense that we are underfunding our first responders because we have not created standards, and therefore don't know how to judge what they need, and their estimate that we could be a hundred billion dollars short in 5 years?

Ms. HILL. I have-we did not look at first responders. We looked at intelligence. And I would defer to Governor Gilmore.

Mr. GILMORE. We have extensively discussed standards in our reports over the years. Yes, standards are necessary, because you have to know what kind of gas masks, what kind of materials you need and so on. But that isn't so much the central point. It is standards to do what? It is buy personnel to prepare for what? It isout together organizations to respond to what threat, and to what type of response is necessary? What kind of vehicles do you need? It is not just a matter of which vehicle.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, follow up with my yellow light. Should we require the Department of Homeland Security in the next 9 months

to do that? They are giving out money and should we be saying you are giving it out under what basis?

Mr. GILMORE. Well, they are not giving much money out, and you hear that from the locals all of the time, and I am not so sure that is bad, to tell you the truth, and it ought to go out sparingly.

Mr. GILMORE. The answer is the question is, should the Department do it? Yeah, but they have got a lot on their plate. It is hard to put together these agencies these disparate agencies with different cultures. I think the administrative burden is enormous, but to the extent that strategic thinking could be done by the Department under your direction, I think it should be.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cox. Thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Thompson, is recognized for purposes of questions.

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have enjoyed the testimony of both witnesses.

Taking off from Congressman Dicks' comments earlier, Ms. Hill, if that agent sent that same memo today, do you think it would be treated any differently?

Ms. HILL. I certainly hope it would. I think Director Mueller is very much aware of that situation and is very much aware of our report and has indicated in his statements that the FBI is taking our recommendations very seriously. The committees have made a long list of things that we pointed out in this report to the FBI that need to be done to improve their own internal communication and their focus this these kinds of intelligence issues.

As I understand it, Director Mueller has said that they are in fact very actively implementing reforms that he says are designed to address the same areas of problems and reform that we have recommended in this report. So I obviously have not had the opportunity since I have left the committee to be briefed on what the FBI is doing, but my understanding is that that is certainly his intent.

The other thing I would say is that, hopefully, if nothing else, by making the facts of the missteps and the lack of focus that happened before 9/11 very public and having discussed it with the agencies many times, I would certainly hope that all of them are very sensitive to these kinds of issues and are doing their best to try and prevent a similar problem in the future.

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you.

On a broader note, if we take the 13 intelligence gathering agencies from Congress and say, well, you all should cooperate and get along and share information, do I hear from your testimony that that is only as good as the people who work for those agencies agreeing to do that?

Ms. HILL. Well, ultimately, it depends on people. It is like any part of government. It is basically made up of people. A lot of it is what Governor Gilmore has said. It is culture. Lot of the issue between intelligence and law enforcement, which has been part of this problem, was historically based on some valid legal reasons. There were some concerns. The Intelligence Community has always been very concerned about protecting their sources. They don't want to give too much to the law enforcement side, because they