tigative community, our counterintelligence community, indeed our counterterrorism community, needs to view information in a different light.

Investigators historically look at information as it relates to the case that they are working on, and that becomes their focus. It is how we are trained, it is how we focus for prosecution, arrests and so forth and so on. But it also became clear that there are nuggets of information in those investigations that affect more broadly our Air Force, and that one agent that is conducting that case cannot have the perspective to understand that without sharing that information more widely within the community.

Mr. BISHOP. Without analysts?

Ambassador TAYLOR. Not solely without an analyst, because analysis is one part of the challenge. The other part of the challenge is enabling others who are part of the reins of security that we have, for instance, the Customs officer in Seattle that stopped Ramzi Yousef, who is also a key person, not to do analytical work but to understand that this particular individual, someone in the U.S. government, knows something about this person that he or she needs to check out.

So the challenge is to place into the information technology system the ability for our analysts to get access to things that they need, but also to give to our first responders, to our security officers, to our INS border guards the information they need, which is not the same as the information that our analysts need. Our border guards need to know that Frank Taylor is a person of interest, and therefore we need to check him out. Our analysts may want to know a lot more about what Frank Taylor has done.

I believe information technology can help us to do this. There is a very real concern with sources and methods. We have to protect those sources and methods, because, without that, we will never have the information. But I don't think that is insurmountable in triaging the information and providing it in the appropriate channel with the appropriate classification to the people who need it to bring more clarity to the picture, the counterterrorism picture.

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. Admiral Jacoby's statement for the record as well as the statement from the General Accounting Office stresses the difficulties posed by incompatible database structures and formats, a problem that afflicts all levels of government across the board.

This incompatibility makes it hard to share that across agencies or to conduct analysis across all of the government's diverse databases. The GAO and DOD statements explain that that is a viable alternative. The private sector has settled on a common data framework and a set of standards that allows full interoperability across organizations. This capability is as essential for industry in the electronic age as it is now for our government in the war on terrorism. But our government is way behind the private sector.

The commercial standard is called XML. Testimony before us today illustrates how important it is in the war on terrorism for the government to adopt this standard and to move quickly to convert our existing databases. Adoption of XML not only allows full data sharing, it also offers much more effective and efficient ways to

Here is another instance where I believe action by the two intelligence committees is warranted now. We could mandate adoption of XML and give the Intelligence Community a date certain by which it would need to have shifted over to the new standard.

Mr. Andre, how difficult would it be for DIA to shift over to the XML standard? Do you think that it is practical to insist that the Intelligence Community as a whole shift to this database standard and do it rapidly?

Mr. ANDRE. Yes, sir, thank you. Let me say a major investment that we have made in the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combatting Terrorism is transitioning their entire data environment into an XML environment. We think it is exceptionally important for the reasons you pointed out.

One of the most important aspects of that is the ability to tag at the content level rather than at the record level. We believe that ultimately if, like the commercial sector, the Intelligence Community adopted the XML approach, that data-they don't have to reside in a single repository-we can have interoperability at the data level and really empower that data and be able to do things with it we can't today.

We are a pretty good test case in both the JET FTS and the J2 part of DIA, because we are also transitioning the J-2 part into a fully digital XML environment, changing the way we produce products, using, I might add, off-the-shelf commercial technology. It is not easy. It is painful. I guess the big question is, I think it is a lot simpler to sort of go from a standing start and say from this day on I am going to be in an XML world, rather than to say I have got 40 years worth of great big databases like the military integrated database and I have to convert all of that data, properly tag it. It will cost a lot of money, it will take a lot of time. But the end result will be certainly worth it.

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. According to inquiries by our staff, the FBI contacted both the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and INS in August of 2001 about Hazmi and Mihdhar. Both agencies possessed information that would have helped locate the two suspects but the FBI asked for specific information and nothing more and expressed no particular urgency about finding them.

Both agencies claimed that they had ways of finding the two and could probably have done so if they had been asked. Could the State Department or INS witnesses please explain how their organizations could have located these two suspects and could they provide any insight on why the FBI did not explain why it was looking for them and why they didn't request help?

Ambassador TAYLOR. I will go first, Congressman. Certainly we were informed in August by a request from the FBI for visa records on both of those individuals, and that is a routine request that we get very frequently, and we responded to that request, as we often do, not asking the reason for the inquiry. The FBI runs thousands of investigations where that data is necessary.

Today that would not happen. We would ask that question, given the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

In our responsibility to investigate visa fraud, we work with many data companies around the world to-around the country ac

tually to look for individuals that we suspect are involved in visa fraud. Most recently we have had a major investigation involving that, and we were able to locate 39 of 72 suspects in about a month. We have the capacity to do that. We know how to do that, but we were not asked to do that. Today we would ask that question and we would volunteer our assistance to the Bureau if they were indeed looking for those individuals.

Mr. GREENE. Yes, sir. From the INS point of view, not only do we have a variety of other databases that contain information, people who would apply for benefits under immigration law or people who would travel in and out of the United States that might provide us with some leads, the Law Enforcement Support Center, as I mentioned in my statement, also has access to a variety of criminal databases and also private sector databases that we can then mine to use as potential leads for an investigation.

It is not unlike what we did during the first Absconder initiative last spring. So I think the capability is there certainly for us to have made a contribution in terms of actively-had we been asked, to actively seek this person, to take a good shot at going after them and locating them.

With respect to the motivations behind the information that we received, I simply can't answer that. But certainly from the standpoint of having capabilities, we believe we could have brought some to the question.

Mr. BISHOP. I think my time has expired. Mr. Chairman, let me thank you and thank Senator Wyden for deferring to me because of the exigencies of my schedule today. I thank you very much for that.

Chairman GRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. Best wishes on the floor of the House of Representatives today.

Senator Wyden.

Senator WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank Congressman Bishop for his excellent questioning.

Gentleman, I come to this with the view that our software and search engines and data mining tools can go a long way to beating the terrorists, but we just are not using what we have got, because we have got all these separate government fiefdoms in effect running databases strewn all over Washington, D.C., and they have either been unwilling or unable to get together so they are connected and then give us the best possible strategy to pick up dangerous trends.

To change this, I wrote legislation-it is now in the intelligence conference; we are working on it now-that would create a single database where all U.S. information on terrorists from the Intelligence Community, other Federal agencies and State and local officials can be gathered together and shared with any intelligence or law enforcement official who needs information on suspected terrorists.

What this ensures-and Commissioner Norris, I think you summed it up-this ensures that everybody is on the same team, Federal, State and local. I hear it from law enforcement officials in Oregon. You have echoed it again. You are not going to win the war on terrorism from Washington, D.C. Much of the important

The reason I bring this up this morning, Mr. Chairman, is, with this item in conference right now, I hope that what we have heard from these six very good witnesses will give us additional strength in terms of getting that terrorist identification-classification system properly funded in the conference. It should be decided, as we all know, very shortly. Gentleman, I think you have given us some very helpful information to get that properly funded.

Let me begin my questioning, if I might, with Mr. Manno. The TSA Office of Civil Intelligence is formerly the FAA's Intelligence Division. I wanted to begin with you and particularly some of the history.

There are years and years of history beginning in December of 1994 with the Algerian armed Islamic group terrorists, their hijacking the Air France flight in Algiers and threatening to crash it into the Eiffel Tower; the 1995 evidence that came from the Philippine national police raid, turning up materials in the Manila apartment talking about crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters. There is years and years of history with respect to the proposition that terrorists are willing to use airplanes as the tool to carry out their agenda.

Given that—and my understanding is that FAA at that time had some of that information-why wasn't it used to put in place a comprehensive set of new security procedures so that, for example, let us say, in the late 1990s, by the late 1990s there could have been a requirement for hardening those cockpit doors. Why wasn't that information that was developed in the beginning, in a serious way in 1994, used to put in place tough new security procedures by, let's say, the late 1990s?

Mr. MANNO. Well, Senator Wyden, we started to take a real close look and perceived the change in the threat environment dating back to 1994. In fact, we worked very closely with the National Intelligence Council and asked for and received a threat assessment, a national threat assessment, that was produced by CIA and FBI, and at that point actually invited in for classified briefings a wide range of representatives from the aviation industry and airports, associations like the Air Transport Association, in order to explain to them the threat had in effect changed from what it was previously, specifically with respect to some of the radical Islamic groups that appeared at that point to be in this country.

That effort, our ability to actually provide classified briefings, ironically enough the briefer from the FBI side of the house, because the briefing was actually presented by CIA and FBI officers, was John O'Neill, who subsequently perished in the World Trade Center.

Based on that, there were a number of measures that were implemented that changed what was the baseline security measures that had been in effect at that point.

In the case of the industry, there is always a desire to know why the regulatory agencies, in this case FAA, are requiring additional measures, because those things cost money. So that effort, with the help of the Community, helped us to convince them of the change in threat. There were a number of specific things that were in fact done.

Senator WYDEN. At that point, did you go to the industry in, say, the late 1990s and say we need changes like hardening the cockpit doors and they were unwilling to support that?

Mr. MANNO. What we do with the industry, there is an ongoing effort to keep them apprised of the general threat, of changes in the threat, in changes of MOS by terrorist groups, and we have done that in a number of different ways, either through the unclassified information circulars and directives that we sent out, the briefings that we have conducted for them, even to the point where we produced a CD that was disseminated to over 750 elements throughout the industry that spelled out in great detail what the threat was, the fact that it was changing. In fact, it even mentioned the possibility of suicide attacks.

Again, this was something that was not based on any specific information that we had received from the Community that indicated that these terrorist groups were in fact planning something like this, but it was a notion that it was a possibility.

Senator WYDEN. With respect to al Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, did your agency have the names of those two hijackers prior to September 11, 2001?

Mr. MANNO. No, we did not.

Senator WYDEN. If you had, what steps would have been taken, had you had that information?

Mr. MANNO. Well, prior to 9/11, we had a process, we had a socalled watch list which was disseminated to the industry via the security directive process. In fact, a number of the people that we suspected were involved in what we call the Manila plot, the Bojinko plot, as you referred to it, were on that list. Again, what we would-the purpose of that process was to highlight for the air carriers particular individuals, individuals that had ties to terrorist groups and that presented a threat to aviation who should either be denied boarding or should be, if they showed up for the boarding, called to the attention of law enforcement.

Had we had information that those two individuals presented a threat to aviation or posed a great danger, we would have put them on that list, and they should have been picked up in the reservation process.

Senator WYDEN. Is your intelligence office connected to the major watch list, like TIPOFF?

Mr. MANNO. We now have access to TIPOFF through IntelLink and CTLink.

Senator WYDEN. Has your office ever had direct access to the National Criminal Information Center data that is maintained by the Department of Justice and the FBI?

Mr. MANNO. Currently we don't, but we have liaison officers that are posted to CIA and to FBI where they sit side-by-side with other officers from INS and Customs, so they are able to access it that way.

We are also in the process-we are in the negotiations with the Customs Service to get access to their text system, with a terminal that will be placed in our intelligence watch, which will then give us access to NCIC. So we have in-depth access to NCIC through our liaison officers and hopefully soon we will have it directly.