TESTIMONY OF CLAUDIO MANNO, ASSISTANT UNDER SECRETARY FOR INTELLIGENCE, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION Mr. MANNO. Mr. Chairman, and members of the Select Committee, I am pleased to represent the Department of the Transportation and participate in your joint inquiry into the performance of the Intelligence Community concerning the events of September 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks against the United States. My full statement addresses the questions posed in your letter of invitation and I would respectfully request that it be entered into the record. I would like to verbally summarize the points made in my presentation. Chairman GRAHAM. Mr. Manno, your statement as well as the statements that have been submitted by all the members of the panel will be part of the record of our hearing. Mr. MANNO. Yes, sir. Thank you. I believe it is important to look at the policies and procedures in place at the Department to receive and act on intelligence information from the Intelligence Community and law enforcement organizations concerning terrorism. It is helpful to look at this issue, first in terms of how terrorism intelligence flows from the producer agencies of the Intelligence Community to the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration. The second part of the process concerns how the information from the Intelligence Community is passed to the private sector as well as State and local law enforcement agencies. The mechanisms for passing information by the Intelligence Community to DOT are well established. DOT identifies and updates its intelligence needs in detailed statements of intelligence interests. The producer agencies use these to determine what products DOT may receive. To help ensure that the Intelligence Community agencies share pertinent intelligence with the Department, the Aviation Security Improvement Act of 1990 required "the agencies of the Intelligence Community to ensure that intelligence reports concerning_international terrorism are made available to the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration." The agencies responsible for producing most of the intelligence that we receive are the CIA, the Department of State, FBI, NSA and DIA. In addition, the Department is active in a number of national counterterrorism and law enforcement community efforts by virtue of its relationship with these agencies. A full-time liaison officer from CIA is posted to the Secretary's Office of Intelligence and Security and that office established a part-time liaison position at FBI. FAA also has provided a liaison officer to the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the NIPC at FBI. TSA's transportation security intelligence service maintains full-time liaison officers at the FBI headquarters in the newly created National Joint Terrorism Task Force, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, the State Department Office of Intelligence and Threat Analysis. We also plan to post liaison officers in the near future at NSA and DIA as well as the Office of Homeland Security. Liaison initiatives are also under way to assign TSA personnel to FBI joint terrorism task forces throughout the coun try. TSA is currently identifying which task forces around the country would be best suited for TSA participation. The TSIS officers detailed to the State Department, CIA and the FBI meet the same high professional standards as the regular employees of these agencies. Accordingly, they are fully integrated into these agencies and have the same access and restrictions as the agency's own employees based on the need-to-know principle and the requirement to protect intelligence and law enforcement sources and methods. Historically, where the Department has had issues with this arrangement is in the definitions used by these agencies as to what constitutes need to know. For example, specific threat information may be routinely shared, whereas domestically acquired nonthreat information, such as terrorist group presence and capabilities needed to evaluate threat information is provided less often, because it is considered investigative material rather than intelligence. Unlike CIA, DOD and the State Department, the FBI has not historically considered itself an intelligence production agency due to the statutory restrictions on the dissemination of information it collects in its investigative role. The Department has experienced no significant intelligence-sharing problems with State or DOD. With respect to CIA, those few times where we have had problems, those resulted from unfamiliarity on the part of CIA personnel with our mission roles and responsibilities. On a daily basis, the Department receives a steady stream of raw reporting and finished intelligence from State Department, DOD. This flow includes items that are sent electronically, hard copy products received via courier and cables and finished intelligence that we can access via community databases. From this in-flow, the analysts on our intelligence watch identify on the average of 100 or 200 cables, reports, hard copy products, faxes and e-mails each day that merit a closer review by us. Up to now, we have now received a similar daily flow of raw reports and finished intelligence from FBI. We have received summary general intelligence on terrorist groups in the U.S. and an assessment on the threat these groups pose to domestic airports' air carriers. In addition, we occasionally receive cables regarding potential threats to transportation or a response to a detailed question or request for assessment that we may have posed through our liaison officers assigned there. Like other Federal agencies, we also receive the FBI's classified terrorist threat warning notices, other alerts and the FBI's annual summary report of terrorism in the United States. We expect, however, that the flow of raw background reporting from FBI will increase in the future. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 authorized the sharing of criminal investigative information with other federal agencies in matters of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence, amending previous laws that prohibited the FBI from sharing grand jury and FISA information. So we think this will be helpful. The process of getting intelligence from the Department into the hands of those that need it at the operational level, both State and local, law enforcement and the affected parties in the private sector, has been accomplished primarily through the preparation and issuance of written notifications such as information circulars and security directives. As appropriate, strategic assessments of the terrorist threat are also disseminated to provide a general overview of the threat environment. Law enforcement officers responsible for security at airports have access to our notices, which are transmitted to them via the airport law enforcement agency's network or ALEAN. This information is provided as sensitive security information, which in most cases consists of a declassified version of originally classified information. These declassified versions are prepared with the assistance and cooperation of the originating agencies. Regulated entities, such as air carriers and airports, receive the notices directly. In the case of security directives, the threat information is coupled with mandatory security countermeasures that the air carriers and airport authorities must carry out. For example, watchlisted names are provided to airlines via this process. The information is available to individual airline check-in agents in either manual or automated form depending on the specific airline. In addition to communicating threat information concerning aviation security via written notices, TSA's 24-hour intelligence watch alerts industry representatives to events of potential interest that would not necessarily result in the issuance of written notification. The watch sometimes relays pertinent information that cannot be declassified to properly cleared industry representatives. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, we at the Department of Transportation recognize the significance of your efforts. On behalf of the American people and we appreciate the opportunity to participate in these proceedings. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Chairman GRAHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Manno. [The prepared statement of Mr. Greene follows:] STATEMENT OF JOSEPH R. GREENE ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER FOR INVESTIGATIONS U.S. IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE REGARDING INFORMATION-SHARING AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2002 I thank you for this opportunity to testify before the Joint Committee, and I am eager to assist you in your inquiry into the performance of the U.S. intelligence community in regards to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. In particular, I want to add to your understanding of the role the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) plays in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of terrorist-related information. Within hours of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Immigration agents across the country worked to support the FBI in pursuing hundreds of leads, as well as responded to requests for assistance from local law enforcement agencies. INS Special Agents in Headquarters National Security Unit and officers from the Intelligence Division collaborated closely with U.S. intelligence. Within a week of the attacks, the INS had over a thousand agents, fully half the total investigative staff, committed to the September 11 investigation and related counterterrorism work. Months later, the INS Forensic Document Lab helped confirm the identify of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. The primary jurisdiction over counterterrorism activities rests with other agencies, most notably the FBI domestically and the CIA and State Department overseas. However, as a result of our exclusive authority to enforce U.S. immigration laws, the INS works diligently to ensure that our counterterrorism responsibilities are fulfilled. The enforcement of immigration laws both requires and generates a considerable amount of information that can be used to identify, detect, and apprehend suspected terrorists and their supporters. For instance, each year INS conducts more than 500 million inspections at our ports-of-entry, receives nearly 8 million benefit applications and the Border Patrol apprehends 1.2 million aliens. Each of these interactions has the potential to generate intelligence. Currently, there are two primary mechanisms in place to facilitate the flow of this critical information to and from INS: computerized “lookout" systems and interagency liaison. INS and other Federal agencies maintain a number of databases that provide detailed real-time information to U.S. diplomatic officials abroad, officers at ports-of-entry and along the U.S. border and law enforcement officials in the nation's interior. INS is constantly seeking out opportunities to expand the information contained in our databases. As President Bush stressed, when he signed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act in May, "We must know who is coming into our country and why they are coming. ...It is knowledge necessary to make our homeland more secure." Gaining information about those entering the U.S. is a critical intelligence tool. INS has recently deployed a new Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), an Internet-based system that will greatly improve our ability to track and monitor foreign students. By maintaining critical, up-todate information about foreign students and exchange visitors, and their dependents, SEVIS will enable us to track foreign students in the United States with far greater speed and accuracy. INS began enrolling educational institutions in SEVIS on July 1, 2002, and SEVIS will be mandatory for all institutions admitting foreign students on January 30, 2002. In October 2001 INS and the Department of State reached an agreement to begin deploying the |