Panel I of a Hearing of the House Government Reform Committee - 9/11 Commission Recommendations

Federal News Service August 3, 2004 Tuesday

HEADLINE: PANEL I OF A HEARING OF THE HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS

CHAIRED BY: REP. TOM DAVIS (R-VA)

WITNESSES: JOHN LEHMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER ®; BOB KERREY, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER (D)

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REP. JOHN F. TIERNEY (D-MA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just as the members of the family who are here today, and all that they represent, have turned their personal pain into public service, and we thank them for that. I want to add my remarks to the Commission members, the two people who are here before us, to thank them for their public service. You've done a great public service to the country, and we all appreciate that. There is no reason in my mind, having looked at all the exhaustive work that the Commission has done to date, that we couldn't have in place by September 11, 2004, the anniversary date, some legislation to move this forward, and I really hope that Congress, or the majority, takes the direction on that, and certainly will work with them to get that done.

In your report, you had a strong desire for a national intelligence director who had control over budgets, the ability to approve and submit nominations to the heads of initial agencies, a Counterterrorism Center that has responsibility for operational planning, I think all of those things make absolute sense, but I think they also demand incredible oversight, which is a point that you've both made today.

In your report, you give two suggestions of how we might do that, one is a joint House-Senate Committee for Intelligence, and the other is, of course, one committee in each body designated toward that goal with combining authorizing and appropriate powers. What's the preference, and why?

MR. KERREY: Well, it's much unfortunate-from my standpoint very fortunate you've --

REP. TIERNEY: Is your microphone on, Senator?

MR. KERREY: Yes, it is. The two people who are the strongest advocates of the joint committee are sitting before you today. So, when we say what are the preferences, we're going to leave out the preferences of the other commissioners as we respond, because we favor the joint committee. I favor the joint committee because I think it's the strongest of the options. It gives Congress a stronger play. It gives Congress the strongest possible play. To go back and look at the Joint Atomic Energy Commission model, the critique that was allowed it, and eventually shut it down, was that Congress was treading on the privileges of the executive more than it should. In this area where classification is the rule, you don't know what's going on, Congress has to have a strong committee.

Regardless of which option you pick, though, Congressman, make sure it's written into law. Don't do it with congressional resolution. No matter what the critics of the CIA will tell you, the men and women who work there follow the law. And they're just a little less persuaded of a congressional resolution. Secondly, require full and complete accounting, require that in the statute, especially if it's the law, it will be done. And the third thing is, because it's classified, because you don't have the oversight, whichever model you pick, require in law that the committee issue a public report once a year that's not classified, that lets people know what the status of these agencies are, are they funded well enough, where are the weaknesses, where are the strengths, et cetera. Get something out there that's public.

The principle reason I think that Congress may find the joint committee appealing, however, and it's a very important one, I was on the appropriations committee, and I know that combining authorizing and appropriating, in the Senate, you could probably get 60 people probably tell you that's a great idea, but the only people who are going to vote for it when it comes to the floor are people who are: A, not a member of the appropriations committee; or B, hope to get something from the appropriations committee to rest upon their Senate career, which is probably less than 10.

So what I believe you can do to accomplish that end is, again in statute, require the committee have representation from the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and I would say Defense Appropriations, as well. We have additional language that keeps as much as possible the politics out of it. One of the things I heard earlier, our commission had power, because we had subpoena power, and it was real subpoena power. Tom Kean was willing to use it. And we got access to documents, we got things that we wouldn't have.

This isn't a whack on President Bush, President Clinton probably would have done the same thing. No matter who the president is, who the executive leadership are, they're going to say, we have executive privilege, you can't come and look at these things. So that subpoena power, and the willingness to use it, if you've got a round in the chamber and you've got it on safe all the time, nobody is going to be afraid. So in this particular case you've got to take as much as possible the politics out of it. So that subpoena means something to the executive branch.

MR. LEHMAN: I totally agree with Bob, and I'm a year older than he is, so I go back to actually dealing with the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy when I was on Kissinger's staff, and when I was Deputy Director of the Arms Control Agency. It was a powerful committee. It was very searching and probing, and it got issues out before the Congress, and provided tremendous guidance to the executive branch. It was almost a perfect model in my judgment of how the equal partnership between the two branches were. And it attracted people like Mel Price, and Scoop Jackson, and Craig Hosmer, and so I am equally enthusiastic with that as the proper solution.

REP. TOM DAVIS: Thank you.

MR. KERREY: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to make a general point. I appreciate there's been a lot of public attention, putting pressure on you all to hold hearings during one of the most unfortunate names that you all have, the American people have, to refer to a time off as recess. You guys need a vacation. You need to get away every now and then. One of the things we discovered is, had more of us read Tom Clancy we might have been able to figure this out. Had more of us read Black Hawk Down or seen the movie, we might have understood that bin Laden was either directly, or indirectly responsible for shooting down our helicopters on the third and fourth of October in 1993. Part of the problem is that you are so pressed for time, constantly getting briefings, constantly reading this stuff that's coming through your inboxes that when you say failure of imagination, that's what happened to all of us.

So one of the unfortunate things is, you've had a lot of pressure to hold these hearings during a recess, God bless you for doing it, for being willing to do it, but take some time off. Rename it a vacation. We need vacation, too. We've got to go away and shut down, and throw our cell phones away, and our Blackberries away, and not make contact with anybody other than the fiction that we're going to take with us to read.

REP. DAVIS: Thank you. You have as much time as you need here. If you want more time you can have it, on that subject.

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