The last series of questions that I wanted to get to was we have had a lot of testimony today about frustration, as a nation of laws and who we are, that sometimes we haven't been able to get the things done that we might have wanted to get done to protect ourselves better and we have perhaps erred a little bit on the side of caution, being a free democratic society that cherishes our civil rights. That is not all bad news. The question is, what improvements can we make if we need to? Now, if I have got it right in my notes, I believe Mr. Andre said that the laws were not the problem, the policies were the problem, and I think Mr. Greene suggested that we did have some problems with some of the laws, and I suspect that the answer is both, that we do have problems with both. Then we have had in previous panels a lot of discussion aboutin the Intelligence Community we call it risk aversion, and in the law enforcement community we call it don't rock the boat. In various iterations, as we have gone through our discussions, it has come down to sort of a culture of it is not necessary to go too far down this road, because it is probably a bigger threat to cause a fuss or have a bad photo op, it is going to cause my career more trouble or whatever the case may be, so why don't we just not do it. Then there are probably very justifiable reasons. What I would like you to tell me is, is that something that we legislate or try and legislate in this country, or is that something that we just try and keep reflecting the will of the people we represent across the board as it changes? I am very much seized with the impossibility of trying to draw a line somewhere that says we know where the line in the sand is, exactly here, where national security protection comes exactly up against your freedom to do what you want and your civil rights as an American citizen or visitor in our country. I don't know where that line is exactly. I don't believe we have had any testimony that calls for any specific legislation, but if there is, we would like to know, because that is what we do. If there is some way we can encourage the culture change to, I guess, exhort for more common sense, and that might be the operative word, I would like to hear instruction from our consumers. So the floor is yours until the light is red. Governor Gilmore, do you want to take a shot at that? You have tried it from the executive side. Mr. GILMORE. Are you asking, Congressman, where the line should be drawn between additional security Chairman Goss. How much do you think we need to do in Congress to try and draw that line? Mr. GILMORE. I think that the approach the Congress ought to take is to examine proposals for reforms, because they are coming a mile a minute now after 9/11, different proposals, structurally and otherwise, and always test those against the question of whether or not it is going to mean a loss of civil liberties in the country, or even if it has the potential for such. For example, we have taken a great deal of time in our commission focusing on the use of the military, not because we think there is anyone evil or bad in the military anywhere, but because 50 years from now if we begin to apply the wrong kinds of structures, somewhere up the road you may run into a problem. So my advice to the Congress would be to always be taking into account the potentialities for the restrictions of civil rights and civil liberties based upon the reforms being urged upon you. Is that responsive, Congressman? Chairman Goss. It is responsive. It is a very difficult question for us, as you know, and we want to understand the culture at the front lines of the working agencies and be supportive, and we want them to do their functions and understand their missions. We have given them conflicting orders. We tell one group of people this is all done on a need-to-know basis, and then we sit here and say not so fast on need to know, start to share. We understand there are conflicting signals coming out. I guess I am calling for the political courage to do the right thing based on common sense at the right moment. You can't legislate that, in my view. Mr. GILMORE. I don't believe people on our commission feel that intelligence-sharing, either horizontally or vertically, is a challenge to the civil liberties of the country. Chairman Goss. You don't. Mr. GILMORE. Now it could potentially be, but mostly it is a matter of getting proper information to people and getting them properly cleared. The danger, the more real danger is that we will put into place innovations of privacy or even law enforcement or military applications that will make us more secure, but in the end begin to impinge upon our civil liberties. For example, within our commission we recommended, for example, that military never be first responder in a first response capacity, but always in support of a Federal civil organization, civilian organization. We only did that as a safeguard. But we also think, by the way, that is based on a model that actually works. Chairman Goss. Thank you, Governor. I don't disagree with what you say. I have a slightly different opinion about how hard it is to convince Americans that vertical information flow from the bottom up may not be Big Brother getting into their lives, and vertical flow from the top down may not be Big Brother telling the locals how to do it. But I think those are things we are going to learn to accommodate as we go along. Thank you. Chairman GRAHAM. Thank you, Chairman Goss. Congresswoman Pelosi. MS. PELOSI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know it is a long way from here to that baseball game, so I will try to make my five minutes within the five minutes. I know you will be a good chairman in that regard. Gentlemen, again, thank you. I want to follow up on my distinguished Chairmen, both of them, their lines of questioning. First of all, Chairman Graham, I am worried about San Diego as well. I was asking about information sharing to Mr. Andre earlier. But as Mr. Pease said, you have answered that question over and over again about why was the information not passed on. But it is not just any city, it is a place where we have substantial military installations, and it seems to me in those cases, maybe we have to be of course, protection is our driving force here, especially before September 11, that perhaps we have to be more proactive where we have more exposure to know what is out there, who is going into certain places to the extent we can, when the port of entry is near those places, and certainly they are all over southern California. So I don't know if that is possible. What I do know, following up on what Chairman Goss said, is that before we start limiting the civil liberties of the American people, we have to do what we are doing correctly. We cannot miss something that is as clear as can be and then say we need to spy more on the American people so that we can get this right. We have to at least communicate the information that we do have. We have to collect it obviously in a more sensitive way so we know the value of it and communicate it to those who can analyze it in relationship to what else they know, where the judgment is good on it. So I would hope, as we go forward, the easy out isn't to say we need to know more of the plans and intentions of the American people. Certainly we do. But do we have to know that by spying on them or just understanding better some of the risks of people coming in and out who have been clearly associated with those who are up to no good when it comes to terrorism in the United States. I was interested, Mr. Greene, in what you said to Mr. Boehlert about the nonresident aliens coming into the United States-excuse me, non-immigrant aliens coming into the United States, half a billion in a year, 250 million at any given time, doubling our population? Mr. GREENE. The half a billion is the number of transactions. Mr. GREENE. It could be commuters across the southern or northern border. It could be a Canadian coming over for milk or a job or that sort of thing. When you actually get down to the number of non-immigrant people coming in, it could be somewhere in the order of 250 million, it could be half of that. The question that he asked was how many do we have now. I don't know the answer to that. I can give you historical stuff. MS. PELOSI. You said-I think I wrote it down correctly-we would have to look at it in a concentrated way. Could you tell me right now how many people you have assigned to that? Mr. GREENE. Well, there is a major NSEERS task force, gosh, between, there is something like seven or eight people just within the Headquarters interdisciplinary unit working on just building the NSEERS project. I don't know how many are working on it from the Department of Justice. There are people in Homeland engaged in the discussion. Ms. PELOSI. Are we talking about thousands, tens of thousands? We are talking about a quarter of a billion people, half a billion maybe. Mr. GREENE. No, it is nowhere near on that scale in terms of our team that is building the NSEERS project. It is not thousands, I know that. Ms. PELOSI. In this regard, globalization is with us and is the future. All countries are invigorated and refreshed by the flow of peo ple in and out, and we don't want to impede that dynamic, what that brings to us all, whether it is trade, education, whatever it happens to be. So, again, because we miss something over here, we want to curb what is going on over here. Again, we have to make sure that people come into our country who are fully in compliance and don't come in for bad reasons unless we know about it and can stop them. But, again, there is something to be lost if we take the easy way out, which I think in the long run is maybe not the most successful way in terms of mission success. Mr. GREENE. I could not agree with you more, and that really does get back to Chairman Goss' question as well, about the challenge that we have. There is no agency in Washington right now that is more risk averse than the INS, I think, and part of that is really about determining precisely what we should be doing. We believe that what we should be doing is focusing on the terrorism, and that should be the highest law enforcement priority for the INS; and that is easy when you are dealing with a watch list. It becomes much more difficult when you are dealing with that large group of people who we may not know anything about in terms of their support of terrorism, but are coming here to either support an action or to commit an action themselves. That is going to be the real challenge for us as we build toward this future. So that is the problem for us. MS. PELOSI. Our country is great because it is the home of the brave and the land of the free. It is great because it is a land of immigrants and we cannot damage any of that enthusiasm— Mr. GREENE. Absolutely. Ms. PELOSI [continuing]. As we go forward. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman GRAHAM. Thank you. Congressman Roemer. Mr. ROEMER. I am all for getting Eleanor Hill to the baseball game to celebrate a victory and a birthday party. I want to give her plenty of time to get through the traffic to get out there. I was just asking the Transportation Security Administration about their efforts to collaborate and share information with regard to the Ahmed Ressam case and the similarity in timers. Mr. Pease, were you at CIA aware of these similarities? Mr. PEASE. This was actually before my my tenure in the Counterterrorism Center. This tidbit has not crossed my awareness. I will check for you to see if it arrived in CTC any time in the last few years. Mr. ROEMER. So at this point you are not aware that either checking back through cables or in getting up to speed in your new position, going back over things, after 9/11, you are not aware of having ever seen this kind of information the Transportation Security Administration had? Mr. PEASE. I am not. I would not want to imply it did not arrive in our Headquarters and the real experts were not aware. Mr. ROEMER. If you could get that to the committee, I would appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Pease. Governor, very quickly, you said, just to be clear, that you had never been briefed as Governor on security information with respect to the State of Virginia? Mr. GILMORE. No, there was no routine to brief the Governor on this kind of activity, nor am I aware it goes on. It may happen ad hoc and incident by incident on a case-by-case basis, perhaps through the Superintendent of the State Police. But the Governor needs to be cut in. Mr. ROEMER. I agree. This worries me a bit. Is it because of clearance problems or because we just don't have the communication and collaboration with our Governors? Mr. GILMORE. Both. Mr. ROEMER. So this is something we really need to address. Are we doing that right now, making sure that Governors are brought in and cleared and getting access to some of this classified information right now, or do we still have 50 Governors waiting for clearance? Mr. GILMORE. Waiting for clearance? They are not even being cleared. Mr. ROEMER. None of our Governors have access to this information? Mr. GILMORE. Not that I am aware of. There may have been some changes since I left the governorship and post-9/11, but I don't think so. Mr. ROEMER. Is that the same, Commissioner Norris, for people in positions like you, as Commissioners of police? Mr. NORRIS. That is actually changing for us. They have provided us with applications. Mine, I now have a Secret clearance, actually through the help of CIA. There were some people helping me to push the clearances because I requested it, and a Top Secret is coming in the future. Mr. ROEMER. Do you know how many other commissioners have Secret clearance? Mr. NORRIS. Actually, I don't. Mr. ROEMER. I think we would be invaluably served to get that. I think we should expedite it for the Governors of our States as well, too. Mr. GILMORE. It probably should be almost automatic, as it is with people in the Congress. But I think that the philosophy we are approaching is there is going to come a time when this can't be ad hoc and incidental. There have to be systems set up that not only cross the horizontal lines, but also go up and down the vertical lines too, and decisions have to be made about how many people and where are they going to be placed, and what clearances they are going to have and what routine information flows up and down. It has to be a system, not an ad hoc and incidental type of arrangement. Mr. ROEMER. As we said all day, a seamless communication system that breaks down this system of not sharing. My green light is still on. I am all done. Thank you very much. It has been a very informative hearing. Chairman GRAHAM. Ms. Pelosi, any further questions or com |