us in helping us look forward and help us try to come up with some answers to some of these very vexing and complicated problems. Congressman Hamilton, I want to especially welcome you before the Committee as both a colleague from Indiana and a good personal friend. We welcome your very extensive testimony. I want to quote back from a line in your testimony which I think is extremely important to us today with the current threat that we have in the world and as we may be going into Iraq to do something about weapons of mass destruction. The quote is: If we were starting all over again I cannot imagine we would create such a vast enterprise and have no one clearly in charge. We still have that system out there today. What do you think specifically we can do about this problem? And how big a problem is it? Mr. HAMILTON. I think it's a very large problem. I think you have two basic options. The one option is to try to strengthen the DCI. I certainly don't oppose that effort because I think that needs to be done. I also think it's a very incrementalist approach that we have been trying for many years and we've never been really satisfied with the results we've gotten. The other option is to go to a director of national intelligence that I have been arguing for. Obviously there are some problems with that as well. But those are the two options and I think you have to make a choice between them. I favor the director of national intelligence. The criticism that Judge Webster and others have made is that it may not-and I think Fred as well-is that it may not be realistic. There's something to that criticism. I mean, I understand it's a very tough thing to achieve. Mr. ROEMER. Congressman, you were just Mr. HAMILTON. But, Mr. Roemer, may I just say that we're in a new period and we've simply got to think anew here. Mr. ROEMER. I couldn't agree with you more. Mr. HAMILTON. And we've got to put aside the way we've always done business, and the way we've always done business is, if we give a little extra power to the DCI things are going to be okay. It's not going to be okay. Mr. ROEMER. You were just talking about the creation of a homeland security department, where we all would probably have our complaints or criticisms about this part of that part, but it's an attempt by the Administration to centralize power and agencies, disparate agencies, under one roof. That's what you're suggesting here as well. Mr. HAMILTON. That's correct. I'm looking for a way to improve, I guess, visibility and accountability in the Intelligence Community. I've gotten to the place where the very phrase "Intelligence Community" I dislike, because it's too vague. And one of the great problems in government always is accountability and getting someone to take responsibility, and I'm looking for that. But I really think the quality of your intelligence will improve if you have a single person over all aspects of the Intelligence Community with responsibility for budgeting and personnel. I'm going to comment on Senator Graham's business on personnel in a mo ment. Mr. ROEMER. Again for Congressman Hamilton, with respect to the need for creation of an independent commission, how do you feel about that? Mr. HAMILTON. I favor it. I think that I come from the point of view that we need more, not less, oversight of the Intelligence Community_that is independent of the Executive branch. And I think this Committee has performed a very important service in the last few months and weeks, but I don't think you've finished the job. I think there's a lot more to be done. It's terribly important how we go about this. We ought not to be saying I'm looking for somebody to blame. We ought to be looking ahead and saying what were the problems in the system that brought about the shortcomings and how can we correct them. Now you and I know that there are a lot of commissions in this town, some good, some bad, some indifferent. So it makes all the difference who you put on the commission. And I think there are a lot of good Republicans and I think there are a lot of good Democrats who can serve effectively on this commission and do the country well, a great service. I don't worry about a little redundancy here or a little overlap. Indeed, I think it's probably good because it's hard to get this town to move on anything and you need a lot of people looking at any given problem. I know you've been a primary supporter of this in the House. I applaud that effort. I also understand the hesitation of the Bush Administration and maybe some of you here about this. You'll say well, this is going to be used to hang us or point out people who made big mistakes. I don't see it that way at all. But we do have to be sensitive to that concern, I believe. But I think a real service can be rendered by further oversight by you, by the Committees, but also an independent commission as well. Mr. ROEMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chair man. Chairman GRAHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Roemer. Senator ROBERTS. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also wish to echo the comments of positive advice and counsel from the four wise men. And, Lee, I would refer your speech to my colleagues. I got to Tab 9. While listening intently to every word that you said, I discovered Tab 9, which includes your speech of July 18, 2001, so you were just as prescient as usual in regards to when you addressed a hearing before the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relationsthat's a mouthful-of the House Committee on Government Reform. So we thank you for your insight. I just have a couple of observations, and if any of you three want to make any comments, I'd appreciate it. Number one, Senator Shelby asked my question in regards to homeland security and some kind of an analytical center. I just had the dubious privilege of being the President of the United States on Monday in an exercise called Crimson Skies-very similar to the Dark Winter exercise on an attack from Iraq-which makes you scratch your head a little bit today-on a smallpox inclusion and what happened as a result of that. It was a very helpful exercise. It has helped us from the CDC standpoint of having vaccines now for every American in regards to a possible smallpox attack. This was an agriterrorism attack, and the USDA was the lead agency. But it became obvious that there were a great many other agencies, more especially the Homeland Security Agency, which allegedly is supposed to take charge, and the Justice Department and FBI and CIA. And in the inclusion of things that happened to us we pretty much found out that after the incubation period you had about two or three days to make some decisions and it was already too late. So you had to make a lot of decisions prior to that. I think a lot of other agencies that took part in this exercise learned a great deal about the possibility of endangering our food supply which has now come into the top ten of things we worry about. But we had the topoff exercises. And I'm wondering. Basically in terms of cooperation and information-sharing the joint investigative staff had an excellent summary of that just a hearing or two ago. If that's not the best way to do this in regards to forcing people to take a look at a problem or a challenge they had not really predicted, and then do an exercise and if you do the exercise obviously you are forced to make these decisions and then you get into lessons learned even with the first responders. That's one thing. In regard to the second question, it is in regard to Senate Resolution 400. One of the things that I have discovered is that when we held a hearing over a year ago Senator Shelby and others were very active in that, the Intelligence Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the appropriators of the Senate we had 46 federal agencies come up. We asked them what their mission was, what they really did, and then who was in charge. Today there are 80 federal agencies; at that time there were 14 subcommittees and committees in the Senate alone who said they had jurisdiction. Now there's 88. Obviously we have been selected as the Committee in regards to the investigation that we're doing now, and I know that Senator DeWine and Senator Rockefeller indicated that perhaps this select committee should be made a permanent committee. I'm wondering, with 37 members, if it couldn't be reduced, if it couldn't have a joint permanent committee between the House and Senate. It doesn't seem to me to make too much sense today to have them both in the House and Senate. And then basically limit the number of committees that Members could serve on, given the challenge we face today. Now that's not going to be very popular, more especially in the Senate. In the House it is, I would say, very commonplace. But I worry that the Congress itself is very fragmented, that we've had the government oversight committees do most of the work in regards to homeland security. But we have 88 subcommittees and committees. My word, we have to do a better job. So in terms of Senate Resolution 400 I'm concerned about that. Now that's a laundry list. I'm probably out of time and you've got a yellow light, but if anybody has any comments I would appreciate it. Mr. HAMILTON. I like the idea of the exercise. I participated in a number of those, Senator Roberts, and you play a role in those exercises, usually a high-ranking Executive branch official. The value of them is it really makes you confront the problem in a very direct way, and you get opinions coming at you from a lot of your colleagues that give a different perspective of the problem and you find out how tough the decisionmaking process really is. I like the idea. It's probably the best single educational experience for a Member of Congress to go through, because Members of Congress are not accustomed to thinking like an Executive branch person in making decisions. Secondly, with regard to the Congress, I agree wholeheartedly. The Congress has to get itself in shape just as much as the Intelligence Community does. You can't possibly conduct oversight of intelligence with 88 committees or subcommittees or whatever it is. That's an unfair burden on the Executive branch to confront that. I think reform of the Intelligence Community, I'm all for that, as I've indicated, but it's not just reform of the Executive branch. The Congress has a lot of reforming to do too. General ODOM. I like very much the idea of a smaller permanent joint committee. I think that would be a lot more efficient. I think the old Joint Atomic Energy Committee was very effective. I think you inherited this from the mid-1970s, but if you could get back to that I think you would have a much more open relationship with the Intelligence Community. Mr. HITZ. And remember, Senator, we have a precedent for it. When the oversight of covert action was first passed in the Senate with the Hughes-Ryan bill there were some 12 committees of the Senate or 12 committees of the Congress, rather, that could claim jurisdiction for parts of that information. Eventually, with the creation of the permanent oversight committees it dwindled to two, plus the appropriations committees. Senator ROBERTS. I thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Feinstein. Senator FEINSTEIN. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you very much, gentlemen, for your testimony. Mr. Odom, I want you to know I read your op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. We're going to have Director Freeh before us on Tuesday and I look forward to asking him some questions related to it. Mr. Hamilton, it's great to have you back again. It's wonderful to see you. Mr. HAMILTON. Thank you. Senator FEINSTEIN. A very respected member of the House. When I came to this committee about a year and a half ago and realized the vastness of the intelligence operation of this country and how diffused it is, spread across so many agencies, with nobody really at the helm, it became very apparent to me that a director of national intelligence was really important. So in June I introduced that legislation, which would create a director of national intelligence which would give him program authority and budget authority so that he would have the wherewithal to really oversee this disparate community and to move deck chairs on the Titanic, so to speak. I sent out a Dear Colleague. I got back virtually no response. It's before this Committee now. One response I did get was from Mr. Tenet, in a letter dated August 27, which, Mr. Chairman, I'd like |