Hearing of the Infastrucuture and Border Security Subcommittee of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security
HEARING OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND BORDER SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
SUBJECT: THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY'S BORDER AND TRANSPORTATION SECURITY BUDGET PROPOSAL FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE DAVE CAMP (R-MI)
WITNESS: ASA HUTCHINSON, UNDER SECRETARY FOR BORDER AND TRANSPORTATION SECURITY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
BODY:
REP. DAVE CAMP (R-MI): The Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Border Security hearing will come to order. Today's business is to receive testimony regarding the Fiscal Year 2005 budget request for the Border and Transportation Security Directorate, the BTS, mission and its various programs. The subcommittee will hear from undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security from the Department of Homeland Security, the Honorable Asa Hutchinson.
Secretary Hutchinson, thank you for testifying today about your directorate's Fiscal Year 2005 budget request. We appreciate your time and the effort that went into preparing your testimony. We look forward to the opportunity to ask you some specific questions regarding the BTS budget and how various programs and funding will impact the strategic objectives of the department.
At this time, the chair would urge-to allow sufficient time for testimony and questions, will urge members to give short opening statements and to submit their full statements for the record. The hearing record will remain open for 10 days after the close of the hearing. Members are advised they will receive an additional three minutes during the question time if they waive their opening statements.
I will at this point submit my statement for the record and ask the ranking member, Congresswoman Sanchez, if she has an opening statement.
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REP. CAMP: Thank you.
Does the ranking member, Mr. Turner, have an opening statement?
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REP. CAMP: The gentleman's time has expired.
REP. TURNER: I'll try to follow up, Mr. Secretary, on the other items I have in my remarks as we get into your questions, but thank you very much.
REP. CAMP: Thank you.
Are there any other requests for opening statements?
REP. SANCHEZ: Mr. Chairman.
REP. CAMP: Yes. I would recognize the ranking member for a comment.
REP. SANCHEZ: Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for your recent pledge to work with me to schedule hearings that address budget details from the Border and Transportation Security Directorate component agencies, such as TSA and Customs and Border Protection. And I ask for unanimous consent to submit the letter from me to you with requests to that and your response, and there are copies for the members here at the committee to have as they would like.
REP. CAMP: Without objection, those letters will be submitted to the record.
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REP. CAMP: Well, thank you very much, Secretary Hutchinson. It's clear that this budget makes significant progress in smart security initiatives and programs. And I think implementing pre- screening programs such as NEXUS, FAST and C-TPAT, which really help commercial truckers, travelers who cross the border frequently and with some regularity, I think that helps us move these low-risk cargo and travelers to ports of entry and allowing your resources to be applied to high-risk and sort of unknown.
My question to you is can you just expand a little bit on these pre-clearance programs and what might be happening in terms of facilitating legitimate trade and travel in terms of your department?
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REP. CAMP: Are you seeing-are you looking at ways to have greater participation in these programs, such as additional enrolment centers or facilities, expanding dedicated lanes, adding programs at other points of entry, and I think particularly in the Container Initiative. I know that there's been a great effort in adding as many ports as possible. If you could talk a little bit about the progress you've made there, I think that would be interesting to the committee.
MR. HUTCHINSON: Well, we are working to expand the dedicated lanes for our FAST, which is Free and Secure Trade lanes for those commercial trucks that have their drivers and their companies with background checks, with added security measures, where they can move through those dedicated lanes more rapidly. And we are expanding those lanes. NEXUS on the northern border. We're expanding that technology on the southern border as well. We will be continuing that rollout, where you have infrastructure investment and the expansion of those lanes.
In terms of the enrolment centers you mentioned, we're trying to make those accessible to those that want to utilize this, and make them efficient with our Canadian counterparts for the processing of those. I'd be happy to get the specific number that we'll be expanding to this coming year, but we are working very diligently to expand a number of those dedicated lanes.
REP. CAMP: I think we're all very interested in the integration and coordination of the various Marine functions that are in the Department of Homeland Security. Do you have some insight on how you're evaluating and developing the best strategy to maximize these resources, and does that include the acquisition of equipment and aircraft, you know, detection machines, boats and that sort of thing.
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REP. CAMP: There has been a great deal of discussion regarding the Homeland Security Department's plans to develop a regional structure for Customs and Commerce issues, and I understand there has been an announcement of seven to 10 regional directors positioned around the country to be points of contact in the event of an emergency. Is this a priority in the '05 budget, this regional structure, and how would those regional centers differ from Customs Management Centers that are currently in place?
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REP. CAMP: I think the concern is that all federal policies and laws be enforced informally in that kind of a system. Do you have any management controls or policies in place to help ensure that?
MR. HUTCHINSON: Well, the first goal would be to make sure that there is the national policy that is implemented, so you don't want to wind up having, you know, regional directors determining various regional policies in terms of implementing our national strategies. There will be a national strategy that will have operational flexibility, and I think that might be what you're getting at, that they will have the flexibility to design operations consistent with what is needed in that particular region, and I think that's what has been somewhat missing in the past. So national policies, but regional flexibility in operations.
REP. CAMP: Thank you.
The gentlewoman from California, the ranking member, may inquire.
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REP. CAMP: Thank you.
REP. SANCHEZ: Mr. Chairman, may I just ask one really quick, quick question here please?
REP. CAMP: The gentlewoman's time has expired, but we'll let her ask one more question.
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REP. CAMP: The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Smith, is recognized for eight minutes.
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REP. CAMP: I thank the gentleman.
The chair now recognizes Ms. Jackson Lee of Texas. The gentlewoman may inquire for five minutes.
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REP. CAMP: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
The gentleman from Arizona may inquire for five minutes.
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REP. CAMP: The gentleman's time has expired.
With unanimous consent, the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands may inquire for five minutes.
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REP. CAMP: Mr. Secretary, I'm going to have to recess the committee for a couple of minutes. I know the chairman is
on his way back and we'll continue when he comes back. But there is a vote on. So we'll recess for just a few minutes.
MR. HUTCHINSON: I'll get you a better answer then.
(Recess.)
REP. CAMP: Mr. Secretary, please give your response.
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REP. CAMP: Secretary Hutchinson, if you'd consider that a formal request from Dr. Christensen and respond to it following the hearing, we'd most appreciate it.
MR. HUTCHINSON: I'd be happy to.
REP. CAMP: The chairman will recognize himself for just a moment and add my welcome to those other members of the committee. We appreciate your coming before us once more this time to talk about your budget which is going to have grown from $14 billion to $16 billion. The 10 percent one-year increase that you're proposing is substantial but particularly large in comparison to what is occurring elsewhere throughout the executive branch, what Congress is looking at for next fiscal year's budget. So we are preparing to entrust you and the department with a great deal more resources, not only than you've had but what everyone else is going to be getting because of the mission of homeland security and its importance.
That's why this hearing is important. We want to find out both through this dialogue and also through our follow-up questions exactly where that money might go and what our priorities are to be. I want to ask a very broad-brush question about your directorate and also the directorate of IAIP.
The information that we're now gathering in the wake of the Madrid bombing is starting to paint a picture that we've seen before. Just as before September 11th, we had some information on some of the people that ultimately were involved in bombing the World Trade Center and Washington and killing people in Pennsylvania mid-flight. Here in this case, in Spain, we also now have in custody people seemingly complicit or perhaps the planners of this bombing, planners and participants in it, who were within our grasp beforehand. And they seem to be connected to al Qaeda.
It suggests the importance of connecting the dots. One connection that we've been able to draw, in particular, between Jamal Zougam and the 9/11 planners-Yarkas is in custody-is particularly disturbing. Of course, Zougam's partner had been searched by Spanish authorities in August of 2001, August 10th, just a month before the September 11th bombings and what we discovered in his apartment were, first, phone numbers of other al Qaeda suspected members in a cell that was purportedly organized by Yarkas who is now in custody in Spain for allegedly planning the September 11th bombings.
We discovered a tape in his apartment that showed Jihadists in Dagestan. So obviously this international connection to international Wahhabists to al Qaeda to the very same people that we've been tracking all along rears its head again. It suggests to me-and I'm just one member, albeit the chairman-that the resources that we might devote in Spain to hardening the train system to putting armed guards everywhere and trying to search everyone who goes on the train and so on, as expensive as that would be, would not be as well spent as resources connecting these dots because we had some of these people. We almost had them.
And you know, had we connected the dots just a little bit better, we might have stopped this. Zougam was not one who was indicted by Judge Garzon. So he was at large. But we put him on our terrorist list here and the group was on our terrorist list and it's somebody who we meant to be keeping track of. So I want to ask as you take these enormous new resources, a 10 percent bump in a $14 billion program. How much of them can we expect will be devoted to this effort of connecting the dots? How much of it should go on in your directorate, and alternatively how much of it should go on in IAIP?
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REP. CAMP: I thank you.
My red light is on, we have a brief opportunity for further questions if any member would like to do so.
REP. SANCHEZ: Yes, Mr. Chairman.
REP. CAMP: The gentlelady from California, Ms. Sanchez, is recognized.
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REP. CAMP: The gentlelady's time has expired.
Does the gentlelady from the Virgin Islands have further questions?
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REP. CAMP: The gentleman from Massachusetts is recognized.
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REP. CAMP: I appreciate your attention, and I recognize the gentlelady from California.
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REP. CAMP: I thank the gentlelady.
I want to thank Secretary Hutchinson for being here with us, you can see we have a vote on the floor. You've gotten some questions today about rail, naturally in light of Madrid. And I know that in particular the cooperation that IP has had with America's railroads and our public transit authorities lies without your direct responsibility, it's outside your directorate. But I want to give you an opportunity to answer generally the question of whether there is going to be an international lessons learned effort focused on Madrid, and whether the Department of Homeland Security will be inferring from what we learn in Madrid ways to update our protocols for rail, particularly passenger rail in America.
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REP. CAMP: Well, I'm very pleased to hear that, and we thank you very much for the time and help that you've provided to the committee this morning.
The chair notes that some members may have additional questions for our witness which they may wish to submit in writing. Without objection-oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Turner is here.
I want to recognize the ranking member, I didn't realize that you had come here, and we've made heroic efforts to make sure you had another opportunity to give him his turn. So the ranking member is recognized-the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from Texas, is recognized.
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REP. CAMP: I thank the gentleman.
And for the final time I want to thank Secretary Hutchinson. Your willingness to stay with us throughout the morning and the afternoon is very much appreciated. The record will remain open in this hearing for 10 days for members to submit written questions and to place their responses in the record. There being no further business, I want to thank all the subcommittee members who were here during the hearing. The hearing is now adjourned.
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