Hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee

August 16, 2004 Monday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: "REORGANIZING AMERICA'S INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY: A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE"

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME)

WITNESSES: WILLIAM H. WEBSTER, FORMER FBI AND CIA DIRECTOR; R. JAMES WOOLSEY , FORMER CIA DIRECTOR; STANSFIELD TURNER , FORMER CIA DIRECTOR

LOCATION: 342 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

SEN. THOMAS CARPER (D-DE): Senator Durbin, who was the person, the saloon-keeper in Chicago that you spoke of?

SEN. DURBIN: Paddy Baller (sp).

SEN. CARPER: Paddy Baller (sp). And Paddy Baller was-what was the quote, "This city ain't ready for reform"? One could also look at the intelligence community and conclude that, given the unanimous recommendations of this 9/11 commission, the Select Committee on Intelligence unanimous recommendations, the countless commissions that have existed over the last 30, 40 years recommending changes, maybe the intelligence community ain't ready for reform either.

I would go a bit further and say my guess is that the committees on which we serve here in the Senate and in the House ain't ready for reform.

You have testified over since, I guess, the 1970s, some of you, before countless committees of the House and Senate, and you have a pretty good idea how this place works and sometimes doesn't work too well. And I'm not going to ask you to help us today think through how we may want to restructure our committees in the House or the Senate, but I do want to remind us all that the 9/11 commission report, while there's a whole lot of recommendations with respect to changes in the executive branch, there's quite a few recommendations with respect to how we operate here on our side of this government.

There's discussions and suggestions that we wait before we change our committee structure until we figure out how we're going to restructure the executive branch, whether they're going to have this director of intelligence, whether we're going to-what kind of responsibilities we'll invest in that person.

But let me just ask you this. Set aside what responsibilities we invest this director with respect to budget and personnel and so forth. Should we be thinking this year about making changes in our approach with respect to oversight, the number of committees we have? I think, with respect to the Department of Homeland Security alone, there are, I heard, as many as 80 committees and subcommittees that have some piece of jurisdiction over homeland security.

What would be your recommendation with respect to sequencing for structural changes on the legislative side?

MR. TURNER: My view is this all ought to go ahead concurrently. I don't see why changing the congressional structure needs to wait until you decide whether it's the DCI or an NID. It isn't all that big a change, in my opinion. And in any event, your structure needs change just as the rest of it does, and we ought to get on with it.

I happen to have been the DCI who had to be there when the committees got formed; actually, not the Senate committee-I was six months late. But I was really the DCI who had to figure out how we adjusted to dealing with the Congress, because we had almost no contact, I believe, before that.

And I must say that in looking back on it, I'm disappointed in the Congress's performance over these many years, the things that have got by, like Watergate and so on; Iran-contra I meant. So I think it's really time for an introspection by the Congress, and I think your role is so vital here in trying, with limitations of the size of your staffs and all that, to introduce a real inquisitiveness into this situation as to whether they are looking at all the aspects of it and not getting group-thinked.

SEN. CARPER: Thank you, Admiral.

MR. WEBSTER: Senator, when we talk about completing the dots, what about those 80 committees? How many dots fail to get completed because of a spread in responsibility and authority throughout the Congress? How much better it might have been if this committee or the SSCI had full knowledge of all the regulation that was going on. It's an argument for consolidation, just as we're hearing that intelligence needs to consolidate and control its information.

SEN. CARPER: Thank you. Mr. Woolsey.

MR. WOOLSEY: Senator, I come at this from a particular perspective. In the early '70s, while I was still in my 20s, I was general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee for Senator Stennis. And one other staff member and I, together with one Appropriations staffer, were the three cleared staffers in the Senate that worked on the intelligence budget, among other things; we all had other duties as well.

When I returned some 20 years later as DCI to testify before the Congress on intelligence and realized I was dealing with four committees, a substantial number of staffers-for example, several of my many, many trips to Capitol Hill in 1993 were to try to turn around the decision of the Senate select committee's expert on satellite design, because he had a different idea about the way satellites should be designed than our experts in the National Reconnaissance Office.

I came to the view that some consolidation with respect to oversight on Capitol Hill would be a pretty good idea. And I'm pleased that the commission recommended it. I think far and away the best approach would be a single committee, a joint committee along the lines of the old Joint Atomic Energy Committee.

I don't think that the appropriations process, at least in my experience, is broken. And I don't see anything particularly necessary to fix it. But I think the biggest problem is the time limitation, the term limitation on the members of the House and Senate select committees, because it really helps a lot to have people on the-members of the committees who've seen issues come around again and again, they can provide an institutional memory the way the members of a number of other congressional committees do, rather than having to be educated afresh with respect to what this satellite does or that NSA program does every time one comes before them.

So I do think getting rid of term limits, hopefully having a single committee for authorization, would be very positive steps, and like Stan and Bill, I don't think it needs to await, whether you have an NID or a DCI.

SEN. CARPER: Thanks. I would just say to you, Madam Chair, and to my friend and colleague, Senator Lieberman, this has been an extraordinary panel, and I sat here, I've learned a lot, but I have also been struck by how fortunate we are as Americans that each of you has served our country, and still do. It makes me proud, and I'm sure I speak for all of us in saying that.

Let me just ask my last question. One of the values of having a diverse panel like this, with people with rich experience, is to share with us sort of at the end of the hearing on the big piece of the big recommendations where do you agree. Where do you see the consensus? Because we could go in a million different directions coming out of here, out of these hearings. But where do you see consensus among yourselves, where you'd really urgently urge us to pursue?

MR. TURNER: I think it's empowering somebody to run a $40 billion a year-roughly-operation. We just don't have that, and we need to have a CEO. So the real issue is just how much authority you give that CEO and still protect the Department of Defense. And I as a military officer would err on the side of giving it to the national intelligence director.

MR. WOOLSEY: And I as a lawyer, now a management consultant who only spent two years in the uniformed military, would err a little bit more on the side of protecting the interests of the secretary of Defense.

But, generally speaking, I think Stan and Bill and I are headed in the same direction, and I would agree with establishing an NID. I would agree with enhancing their authority over tasking budget and personnel, but I would like to essentially require a collaborative relationship between that individual and the secretary of Defense over some 80 percent of the national intelligence programs.

SEN. CARPER: Thank you. Judge?

MR. WEBSTER: I haven't much to add except that giving us-giving the intelligence leader, whatever he may turn out to be, the kind of authorities that he's thought to have but really doesn't, and making them work in that way, as Jim called it an adjustment-I'd say shifting the initiative, presumption of authority-all of those things can only work with a more effective intelligence community.

SEN. CARPER: Thanks, that was great.

MR. TURNER: Could I have one point? I don't worry about the Defense Department so much because it's so powerful. I mean, it's got all kinds of ways of protecting its interests-and will.

SEN. CARPER: Thanks for that clarification and for your excellent testimony.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you, Senator.