Federal News Service - Panel One of a Hearing of the House International Relations Committee - Transcript
Federal News Service
HEADLINE: PANEL ONE OF A HEARING OF THE HOUSE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE SUBJECT: DIPLOMACY IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM: STATE DEPARTMENT STRATEGY
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE CHRIS SMITH (R-NJ)
WITNESSES: CHRISTOPHER KOJM, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 9/11 COMMISSION; SUSAN GINSBURG, TEAM LEADER FOR BORDER SECURITY AND FOREIGN VISITORS, 9/11 COMMISSION
LOCATION: 2172 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
BODY:
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REP. SMITH: Thank you very much, Mr. Menendez. I will now, under previous agreement, go to our two witnesses --
REP. BRAD SHERMAN (D-CA): Mr. Chairman? Is there a possibility that the rest of us would be able to make opening statements, given that we don't have that members?
REP. SMITH: Because we have nine secretaries here, the thought was that at the end I would gladly entertain any comments people might want to make, but we want to get right to the witnesses, and Mr. Menendez and I did agree in the beginning. Without objection, your statement and that of any other member will be put in the record.
I'd like to welcome our two very distinguished witnesses, beginning with Christopher Kojm, who is no stranger to this committee and to the proceedings of our International Relations Committee. Chris served as deputy executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, the 9/11 commission. He served from 1998 until February of 2003 as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence policy and coordination in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He served previously in the Congress on the staff of the House International Relations Committee under Ranking Member Lee Hamilton as deputy director of the Democratic staff from '97 to '98, and as coordinator for regional issues from '93 to '97, and under Chairman Hamilton on the Europe and Middle East Subcommittee staff from '84 to 1992. So an enormous amount of time spent here on this committee. From '79 to '84 he was a writer and editor with the Foreign Policy Association in New York City. He has a master's degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, and an A.B. from Harvard College.
Our next distinguished witness will be Susan Ginsburg, who is senior counsel and team leader for the 9/11 commission's border security team. She served as chief of staff and senior advisor to the undersecretary for enforcement at the Department of Treasury from 1994 to 2001, and as a special assistant at the Department of State's Office of International Narcotics Matters from 1979 to 1981. An attorney, she also serves on the board of Aid to Artisans, a non- profit organization focused on development.
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REP. SHERMAN: Yes, let me start by commending Mr. Menendez for the specific policy ideas that he put forward in his opening statement. When he comes back, you'll tell him I went on and on and commended him profusely-but let me move on.
I want to commend the commission for something it did not do, and that is it did not suggest that we somehow try to placate al Qaeda in the hopes that al Qaeda and its followers would heed us less. Even if the U.S. abandoned its position and its friends in the Middle East, we are still going to be al Qaeda's number one target, because we exemplify on a grand scale a culture which competes successfully with the Taliban ideologies. The U.S. cannot appease bin Laden; we can only whet his appetite. Because if we gave him everything he says he wants, he would simply demand more, flushed with a sense of victory, unless we were prepared to agree that the Taliban policies would prevail everywhere. So I thank the commission for telling us how to win the war on terrorism, rather than outlining how we can retreat.
I'd like to pick up on Mr. Leach's comments, policy versus policy, because if you read the press about the commission report, you come away thinking that it's all about changing the organization chart of the federal government, and really just changing the organization chart of the intelligence community. And perhaps Mr. Kojm could help me with this, because I read Chapter 13 with its specific organization chart recommendations, but Chapter 12 sets forth policy goals. And these include denying sanctuary to terrorists, the need to fight the war of ideas in the Muslim world, increased efforts to deal with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the use of America's economic power to achieve these goals. And then you get to Chapter 13 and you see, you know, what Porter Goss's new job description should be and who his boss should be.
Let's say that we fully implemented every idea down to the letter that the commission has recommended with regard to the structure of the U.S. government, and then we ignored all of the policy recommendations and pretty much kept doing-following the same policies, but we had a different-obviously we'd have a different organizational chart for our intelligence community. Would you regard that as pretty much a substantial implementation of the commission's recommendations, or as basically a failure to implement the recommendations of the commission?
MR. KOJM: Mr. Sherman, first, thank you for the question. Your concerns are the same as our concerns. There is ample interest in Washington on who's up, who's down, who's got which bucks where, who's got what power. And these questions are not unimportant. But we're very pleased to have the opportunity to testify before this committee on many other aspects of the commission's report.
To address your question bluntly, if we implemented the structural changes and did that alone, we would have failed. We would have not made America safer or more secure. We believe strongly that we need the package of recommendations across the board, comprising every aspect of our mandate. That's aviation security, border security-as my colleague Susan has discussed-changes in foreign policy, public diplomacy, homeland defense, emergency response-we need all these recommendations. Now, look, we're not tied to every word. This is not some kind of writ. If there are better ideas-and surely there are-that can emerge from this institution or elsewhere, we welcome them. But we believe that an approach must be a comprehensive one. Moving the boxes alone means failure.
REP. SHERMAN: Ms.-by the way, thank you very much for that answer, and I want to thank two of the commissioners for coming out to Los Angeles for the field committee-the field hearings that our subcommittee did that I think began the focus on the policy recommendations. And I think these hearings as well will perhaps get the public to realize that there's more in the report than an organization chart.
Ms. Ginsburg, unfortunately-and I'll be dealing with the State Department witnesses on this-we seem to be acquiescing in an nuclear North Korea and a nuclear Iran. Now, whether we are or not, there is still a significant risk that those two countries are going to get nuclear weapons. Then the question is: Should we acquiesce in that on the theory that we can prevent those weapons from getting into the United States? There are three ways that they could get in that I can think of: ICBMs-that is to say inter-continental ballistic missiles; they could come in through our borders or our coasts. And you have focused on our borders and our coasts.
Now, we already had a border defense system that caught one out of 20 of the hijackers-well, it didn't catch them, but prevented him from coming in. But we were just dealing with al Qaeda-this is sophisticated for a terrorist organization-probably the most sophisticated organization being run out of cave. But-and I realize they had far more than that in Afghanistan, but they were never a state. And even if they were a state, Afghanistan was never much of a state. Imagine a country so sophisticated that it could build an inter-continental ballistic missile, with all the precision that involves, and they instead turn that precision to trying to perhaps have a speedboat drop off of a freighter going from Malaysia to Tijuana, or sneak a nuclear weapons across the border of the United States. Imagine a state that had diplomatic pouches going into Ottawa and Mexico City and the U.N. headquarters anytime they wanted. Is it realistic for us to think that we could have such an air-tight border that we could prevent a nuclear weapon the size of a person from being smuggled into the United States or sent close to our coastal waters on a speedboat from a freighter? Or should we instead say if these-if a state sophisticated enough to build an ICBM has nuclear weapons, we're probably not going to be able to stop them from smuggling them into the United States?
MS. GINSBURG: Well, I think that the general view is we're not going to be able to stop all incidents of terrorism merely by our border controls, and that's why the report has a whole array of recommendations, including a major thrust on non-proliferation. Nevertheless, we do think that the border controls can be strengthened and ought to be strengthened through building a very layered system that looks at all these opportunities and tries to reduce our vulnerabilities.
REP. SHERMAN: Obviously we need those controls to deal with enemies like al Qaeda, and some that are a little less sophisticated than al Qaeda was back in 2001. But the idea that we're going to build a star wars system to defeat a country that can build a ICBM ignores the fact that a speedboat off a freighter is a lot easier to build an ICBM
And it makes me wonder why we would assume that we can make ourselves safe from such a sophisticated adversary if we allow that adversary to develop nuclear weapons.
Mr. Kojm, one of the areas that the commission focuses on is in getting our message to the Muslim world. We're spending $600 million on international broadcasting; a decent chunk of that is being spent on broadcasts into the Muslim world. And yet we don't provide any aid to the private broadcasters based chiefly in Los Angeles that have an incredibly large audience in Iran. And I wonder whether you or the commission has any view on whether we should support those who have already established an audience-and yet they're really shoestring operations; I've seen them, and they often lack for content, often lack for-just the satellite time they need to get their message into Iran.
MR. KOJM: Mr. Sherman, we did not get into that level of specificity with respect to how to support broadcasting or other methods of message transmission. I think all I can say there is that the commission certainly would want to support creativity and creative approaches to both deliver the message and extend a positive message.
And I think I'd just have to stop at that point.
REP. SHERMAN: And-do I have time for one more question?
REP. SMITH: You've had 10 minutes, but one more question.
REP. SHERMAN: The commission was very precise in talking about how Iran allowed known al Qaeda terrorists to go in and out of that country and deliberately did not stamp their passports, thus facilitating al Qaeda operations in general and perhaps the attack on 9/11 in particular. Do we have any reason to think that that was just a rogue decision made by some local customs official of Iran without the knowledge or approval of controlling elements in Tehran? Or was this a national decision implemented in several different places in Iran?
MR. KOJM: Well, Mr. Sherman, to be precise, we don't really know. We developed this question really quite late in our investigation and frankly think that others will have to take this up. What is clear is that the future hijackers, a number of them, did transit Iran to Afghanistan. Their visas were not-excuse me, their passports were not stamped. That seems to have been a conscious decision, but to speak with more precision is really beyond what we know.
REP. SHERMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.