Hearing of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment: Building the Information Analysis Capability...

HEARING OF THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, INFORMATION SHARING, AND TERRORISM RISK ASSESSMENT: BUILDING THE INFORMATION ANALYSIS CAPABILITY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

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Mr. Simmons. [Presiding.] The Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment will come to order.

The subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on how the fiscal year 2006 Department of Homeland Security budget request helps further the information sharing and analysis capabilities of the Department of Homeland Security. I am told that we only have this room until 4:00 p.m., 1600 hours, today, so I will be short in my comments, and then we will try to extend to all members the opportunity to ask questions, but also remind them that the room will be made available to another group at 4 p.m.

I would like to recognize myself for an opening statement. As we begin this first hearing of the Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, I would like to start by thanking the Chairman, Chairman Cox, for his leadership in helping to establish the full committee as a standing committee of Congress. I look forward very much to working with my colleague, Representative Lofgren from California, as the Ranking Member of the subcommittee, and also the Ranking Member of the full committee, Representative Thompson, who is with us here today.

I represent the Second District of Connecticut. On September 11, we lost 12 friends and neighbors. On September 11, we all failed in our constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense. This subcommittee has a vital role to build our capabilities in intelligence, information sharing and risk assessment to help prevent another terrorist attack.

I would also like to make a second point. I believe in bipartisanship when it comes to national security and homeland security. When I joined the U.S. Army almost 40 years ago, I put these dog tags around my neck. I wore them until I retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in the year 2003. These dog tags have my name on them, my serial number, my blood type and my religion, but there is no mention of party affiliation. During my years of public service, I have tried to be bipartisan. I look forward to conducting the work of this subcommittee in a bipartisan fashion.

Information analysis and warning is perhaps the most important capability of the Department of Homeland Security. Intelligence must drive our protection decisions, resource allocations, and homeland security priorities. Since its inception in March 2003, the Department of Homeland Security has worked to construct a robust analytical capability and has dedicated itself to fulfilling the broad statutory functions outlined in the Homeland Security Act. The committee is encouraged by the progress to date, but there is a lot more work to do, and the responsibility for that work falls on us.

General Hughes, you have some challenges and opportunities ahead of you. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004 created a Director of National Intelligence and a National Counterterrorism Center. This new reality will require the office of Information Analysis of DHS to adjust to a new operating environment. IA must take this opportunity to
continue to build on its initial progress and construct a fully functioning and operational Intelligence Community component, while ensuring that DHS maintains the vital link to its state and local partners, and also ensuring that as we work to protect the freedom and security of our homeland, we also continue to protect and preserve our civil liberties.

The partnerships that you have engaged in have led to central communications links between the federal government and state, local, tribal and private sector officials. These links help to ensure that the men and women on the frontlines in the fight to protect our homeland have the essential information they need to help prevent another terrorist attack. I hope your testimony today will address how these links and partnerships are being strengthened and refined to help keep America safe.

I welcome you, General Hughes, to the subcommittee today. I also want to thank you, as somebody who has also worn the uniform for, in my case, 37 years, 7 months, and 24 days, but who is counting. When you are having a good time, you do not count it all up. But I want to thank you for your very distinguished service to our country. I look forward to hearing your testimony.

I would like now to recognizing the Ranking Minority Member of the subcommittee for any statement that she may wish to
make.

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Mr. Simmons. I thank the gentleman for his comments. As somebody who worked for the CIA for 10 years, and then finally
in military intelligence for over 30 years, sharing information is a hugely important issue. Security is important, but a perfectly secure piece of information which is not disseminated is of no use. So what we have to do is come up with a balancing act. We have to balance the needs for security with the needs for sharing so that we can better protect the American homeland. So that is a very good point.

General Hughes, thank you again for coming before the subcommittee today. I will apologize to you in advance. I will have to vacate myself from the chair in a few moments to meet with the Secretary of the Navy in a prior commitment. I trust that our distinguished full committee Chairman will be able to carry on in my absence. I will be back as soon as possible. Thank you for being here today, and we look forward to hearing your testimony.

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Mr. Simmons. I thank you for your testimony. What we will do is I will ask a question and then I will go to my left and right by order of appearance at the time of the gavel and thereafter, after of course our Chairman and Ranking Member have had their opportunities.

I commanded a military intelligence unit in the mid-1990s that created a handbook for open source intelligence that was eventually adopted by the U.S. Army as doctrine. I have had a personal interest in open source intelligence ever since. I have traveled to Special Operations Command in my capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee. I have gone to open source conferences. I have met with officials from around the world who have an interest in this capability.

It seems to me that open source acquisition or open source intelligence, that is intelligence that is created from the collection and analysis of open sources of information, lends itself particularly to the intelligence challenges of the Department of Homeland Security for two reasons. One, in some respects the information that we are relying on or looking for may come from that small municipal county sheriff's department, for all we know. It needs to be transmitted quickly, and it does not need to be classified in and of itself. Two, products that are derived from open source acquisition and analysis often do not have to have the same level of classification as those that are collected through other venues, so it is more readily available to share with the American people.

Cost is also a factor. Where are we in the development of this capability in support of the mission of the Department of
Homeland Security, and where would you like to see us go?

Lieutenant General Hughes. We have explored a number of avenues with regard to open source information. I have been a proponent of it for a long period of time. I have to tell you that I have discovered along the pathway that I have taken, anyway, that there are some problems with it. A lot of information from open sources, much of it is erroneous, wrong. When we use it exclusively without cross-checking it with something else, we have found, I have found, it has been my experience, that it usually gets us in trouble.

So I think while I think there is great power in this source of information, I also think we need to tread carefully in using it, and understand the context in which it can be used. We have on our computers now in the IA element the OSIS. It stands for the Open Source Intelligence System that the intelligence community is the proponent for and now provides numerous search engines, databases, media files, download capabilities of all kinds, including photographs, pictures of the ambient culture and environment around the world. We have all that at our fingertips right now. We have had guest speakers on this topic we have tried to inculcate in the homeland security intelligence analysis the power of, the idea of open source intelligence.

I do not know whether you are familiar with a gentleman named Robert Steele.

Mr. Simmons. I am intimately familiar.

Lieutenant General Hughes. Okay.

Mr. Simmons. I think you know what that means.

[Laughter.]

Lieutenant General Hughes. Yes, I do. I do. Robert Steele, for all of his many interesting characteristics, has been something of a pioneer in this field. We have had him come and talk to us. It was a very interesting talk and very deliberative and engendered a lot of discussion. I think that with Robert Steele's views as something on the far end of the utility spectrum, you may think of never using open source information as the other end of that spectrum. We are trying to find utility and balance along that spectrum.

Once again, I think it has great potential and we are very knowledgeable about it and using it.

Mr. Simmons. Thank you for that response.

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Mr. Simmons. I would be happy to do that. I began my political career as a police commissioner, and in the post-9/11 environment, the new model is not local, state, federal each doing its own thing. The new model is communication between all
levels. I know the Ranking Member has expressed to me her frustration over the same type of issue. My guess is that this is an important consideration for this subcommittee, and we will certainly look into it.

Lieutenant General Hughes. If you do not mind, I must give you just another piece of information.

Mr. Simmons. I do not want to deny you, but the distinguished lady from Texas, her questions, I know she has been here for a while, so make it brief, General.

Lieutenant General Hughes. Okay, I will make it brief. The question you posed to me was in the context of the homeland security alert system, the changing of the colors. It is true that in the initial application of the changing of the colors, not much information was given. It is increasingly true, has been over time, since the Christmas 2003 and January, February, and March 2004 period, we have given more information. I will make sure you have the context of the question, there. But I think it is a very good thing to ask, to have us give you a better characterization of how much information we are giving out.

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Mr. Simmons. Thank you.

Just very briefly, back in 1981, I became the staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, working for Senator Barry Goldwater as the Chairman and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as the Vice Chairman. Try that one on for size, staff. The Chairman is Senator Goldwater. Well, you are too young to even remember who he is; and the Vice Chairman was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a good Republican and a good Democrat. One from the west and one from the east; one conservative and
one liberal. I sat and worked with them for 4 years as they initiated what I consider to be professional congressional oversight of the intelligence community.

I learned about the value of bipartisanship, and I learned about the value of listening to others when it comes to the intelligence business. I learned that you can put those differences aside if you are focusing on a common goal, which in that case was to build the intelligence community to preserve and protect our values and our people and our country.

Regrettably, on 9/11 we failed in that regard. So the mantle has been passed to another generation of members of Congress and another generation of members of the staff, to do what we can do to preserve and protect our homeland, while at the same time preserving and protecting our civil liberties. That is an awesome challenge. In those days 25 years ago, we did not have a hearing room or spaces that were ours. We occupied the auditorium in the Dirksen Building. Today, we do not have a hearing room, I do not believe. We are looking for one, although this is much better than the auditorium of the Dirksen Building, I can assure you.

But we should not let these little logistical challenges get in the way of the important work of this subcommittee and of course the important work of the full committee.

I will leave you with a final thought. For the 4 years that I have been a member of Congress, I have never changed the
license plate on my car. I know some immediately go out with a screw driver and put on that lovely congressional plate. But the plate that I have on my car has the simple phrase ``kung ho,'' which conveys enthusiasm and excitement, but as we all know comes from the Chinese word ``kung ho,'' which means ``work together.''

I look forward to working together with the staff, with the members of this subcommittee, with the Administration and others, to pursue the important agenda that we have before us.

Thank you all for being here today.

And thank you, General, for your participation.

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