Senate Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing on Worldwide Threats to U.S. Security

FDCH TRANSCRIPTS
Congressional Hearings
Feb. 12, 2003
Senate Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing on Worldwide Threats to U.S. Security

REED:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you, Director Tenet and Admiral Jacoby.

I just returned last weekend from Munich and Wehrkunde and talked to German officials and other NATO officials. And one of the stumbling blocks for a more concerted effort with respect to confronting Iran is a dispute about whether or not are substantive links between Baghdad and terror groups. And yesterday in your testimony, Mr. Director, you cited Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad, but also in the press said, "He's not under their control," or words to that effect—that he is an independent operator.

TENET:

Sir, he is a senior Al Qaida associate who has met with bin Laden, who has received money from Al Qaida leadership, and on my list of top 30 individuals that are required to decapitate and denigrate this organization, Mr. Zarqawi's on that list. The fact that he is a contract where he does things on his own, but he has an intimate relationship with him and we classify him as a senior Al Qaida associate well known to all of them.

REED:

The issue is—and I want to be clear, I understand your response. The issue is his relationship to Saddam Hussein to Baghdad to—if he is operating in concert explicitly with Saddam Hussein or is there for his own convenience and safety...

TENET:

The specific line of evidence and argument we have made is is they're providing safe haven to him. And we know this because a foreign government approached the Iraqis twice about Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad and he disappeared.

The second troubling piece of this, sir, is, as I mentioned yesterday, the two dozen other associates and two senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad associates, it's indistinguishable from Al Qaida because they merged there.

And the third piece I'd say to you is Baghdad's not Geneva and it's inconceivable that these people are sitting there without the Iraqi intelligence service's knowledge of the fact that there is a safe haven being provided to people who believe it's fairly comfortable to operate there.

That's as far as I can take the story today.

REED:

Following up the presence—all of these individuals you've cited are in Baghdad, based on your information.

TENET:

Yes.

REED:

Do you have any information that, beyond providing the safe haven, as you seem to have clear evidence, that the Iraqi regime is facilitating their operations?

TENET:

That's what we're trying to understand more of, sir.

REED:

But you do not have that...

TENET:

I'll talk about this a little bit in closed session.

REED:

Fine.

Now with respect to bin Laden's statement yesterday, and I know you've responded to Senator Byrd in terms of your desire to look at it more closely, but some of the language I think deserves close scrutiny with respect to the supposed collaboration and affiliation between Al Qaida and Baghdad.

This is the text I have: "We wish first, on the threshold of this war, the war of the infidels and disbelievers, which the U.S. is launching with a number of its allies and agents, first the sincerity of intentions for the fighting should be for the sake of Allah only, no other, and not for the victory of national minorities, or for the aid of the infidel regimes in all Arab countries, including Iraq," which seems to be a statement not of unconditional support for Baghdad, for Saddam Hussein, for his regime. In fact, he is lumped into the same category that we are, as infidels.

TENET:

Well, sir, you're talking about an individual who's a master at deception, an individual who understands all the linkages that are being made all over the world about this.

So let's be careful about placing a lot of credence on distinctions that he's making here in a way that—and I'd like the opportunity to just be careful about it, look at it. But the kind of language and solidarity he talks about with Baghdad is something we want to look at more carefully inside the text.

REED:

I encourage you to do that, but I think you have to at least confront this language and try to put it in a larger context.

REED:

If that's what you proposed to do, then I encourage you to do that.

Admiral Jacoby, you're at an interesting position, where you have access to collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency, and yet you provide specific support to the war-fighters who are planning the targeting of targets in Iraq.

This whole issue of how much information and what type of information has been disclosed to the inspectors—can I ask you to generally comment, if we put the target list that General Franks is developing to attack issues, weapons of mass destruction sites and potential sites and we laid next to that the information that we're providing to the inspectors, would that be essentially the same list?

JACOBY:

Sir, I haven't tried to do a side-by-side comparison. But we're working from the same shared information on the front end to develop that list, so I would expect great commonality.

REED:

Has anybody done that side-by-side comparison to essentially check, not just the judgment of the intelligence authorities, but the judgment of the military authorities to planning this operation?

JACOBY:

I'm not certain whether it's been laid down that way or not, sir.

REED:

Mr. Tenet, are you aware, has anyone done that side-by- side?

TENET:

I don't know, sir.

REED:

Turning to North Korea, it seems increasingly clear that if we do nothing in the next several weeks or months they will have sufficient plutonium, marketable quantities. And that's a shuddering concept. Are we reasonably confident we're beginning to identify the possible links to terror groups that might attempt to acquire this material, Mr. Tenet?

TENET:

I don't have any specific links that I've developed to terror groups out of the North Korean context, sir, at this moment.

REED:

But we're looking hard, I presume?

TENET:

Well, we always do where we have this kind of capability present.

REED:

You mention in your statement, and I, you know, agree with you, there's a frightening potential of nuclear powers emerging. You mention there were non-state actors in many cases. You're identifying those. And is it presumptuous to say that our policy would be to preempt those non-state actors before they can give aid?

TENET:

Well, sir, I'm not making a policy prescription, but we're working very, very hard to identify companies, people, individuals, things that don't look like states that deal in chemical, biological, nuclear capability. And we see a number of these popping up around the world that causes us concern.

But the policy toward that would be not ours. But our job first and foremost is to gather as much information as we can to lay down before the policy-makers so they can make determinations.

REED:

Thank you.