Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Implications of the Recommendations of the 9-11 Commission on the Department of Defense

Federal News Service August 11, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBJECT: IMPLICATIONS OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION ON THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA)

WITNESSES: STEPHEN A. CAMBONE, UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTELLIGENCE; VICE ADMIRAL LOWELL E. JACOBY, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY; MAJOR GENERAL RAYMOND T. ODIERNO, FORMER COMMANDER, FOURTH INFANTRY

LOCATION: 2118 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

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REP. BARON HILL (D-IN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to depart from the normal line of questioning here and go back to September the 11th. I can remember when we were all standing on the steps of the Capitol singing "God Bless America." It was one of the few times that I actually felt like I was in a nonpartisan environment.

And I would hope that as we have these hearings, that we could get to that same level of nonpartisanship because of the safety of the people of the United States. Last night and this morning, I was rereading what happened on September the 11th, 2001, and was again amazed by the amount of mistakes that were made.

We have 19 people in this country illegally that are plotting to kill Americans. They got through our security system. I was just reading about the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 that actually was hijacked about six minutes after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, allowing -- 48 minutes later it crashed into the Pentagon. And I'm wondering in my mind, what happened?

You all were there at that particular time. I remember where I was. We in part depend upon you to keep us safe. I would like to hear from you what feelings you were having on September the 11th, where you were at the time that it was all occurring. In retrospect, aside from the 9/11 commission's report, what do you think ought to be done to improve our intelligence?

MR. CAMBONE: Sir, I was in my office, and at the time I had been assigned the responsibility-as the number two person in policy, had been assigned the responsibility for crisis management in the department. I was completing a staff meeting when the first airplane hit the World Trade Center. I thought it was a horrific accident. I asked the people who were part of the crisis management team to assemble downstairs in roughly 45 minutes to an hour.

I turned around, returned to my office; the second plane hit. We were downstairs in 30 minutes. We were inside the crisis command center when the third plane hit the building. We immediately evacuated the building and then went downstairs, after a period of time, to join the secretary and the vice chairman, who had been here on Capitol Hill at the time, to begin preparing a response.

Among the first things that were done were-there was a conference call that was in session. The chairman joined it roughly at 20 minutes after the hour. The secretary joined shortly thereafter. In that period of time, the two of them consulted on the defense condition that we were going to establish.

It was determined that the secretary of Defense had the authority to declare DEFCON 3 on his authority. There was a discussion with the vice president and the president about it. That decision was left in place. And with that change from the DEFCON 5 condition to the DEFCON 3 condition, the rules of engagement for NORAD changed, and they went from a situation in which, as I recall, their primary mission was to trail and report, as in the case, for example, of the Payne Stewart incident about a year or so earlier when the crew and passengers had somehow become incapacitated. They go from trail and report to being in a situation where, depending upon the hostility displayed, they are in a position to engage.

The authority for them-the express authority for them to engage worked its way through a series of levels of command, and it was roughly at the time that the aircraft impacted in Pennsylvania, when the flight crews were being informed that they now had authority to engage.

From that moment on, during the course of the day, the secretary re-engaged the president and the vice president and others to work on two things. One was refining the rules of engagement for those pilots. The secretary, having been a pilot, understood what it was like to be in that position and wanted to be certain that the pilots had the right information about engagements.

Secondly, he began thinking about what the nature of the response for the United States ought to be in anticipation of a meeting that evening with the president and other members of the National Security Council.

Now, with respect to things that might be done differently, there is no question that we might have done better with respect to the sharing of information between the FBI and the CIA. There is no question that the meeting that was called in July, I believe, June or July of 2001, in which the threats that had been accumulated by the intelligence agencies and conveyed to the various FAAs and other airline industry people and so forth, might have been better handled under a different set of circumstances.

There's no question that we here in the Department of Defense might have had more attention to some of the reporting threat streams that you see going back over a period of 10 years about the use of aircraft.

But the fact of the matter is, sir, that the reason that the delay between the time of American 11 and the aircraft that impacts in Pennsylvania was delayed was because we were set up to look outside; the department was. And we did do that successfully. We had escorted a Lufthansa flight some years earlier under these very same conditions. And the conditions were not right for us to look inside the country. The FAA can't look inside the country. It works off of transponders, not radars. The aircraft turned around and was lost to radar for a period of time.

So there were changes that have taken place since, and we have put NORTHCOM in place. They have made the proper relationships with NORAD. They've done the exercises and the training. And, Lord knows, all those exercises haven't been perfect and all the occasions on which there have been alerts, things haven't gone properly well. That's all admitted.

Nevertheless, I think we are better knitted together for that kind of threat. You saw that in the case of the threats over Christmas and the work that was done; again, escorting aircraft across the United States. The JFCT (ph) has been put into place inside the Pentagon and it works for Admiral Jacoby. It's been manned and staffed, and it works very hard.

Our counterintelligence field agency has been staffed up and it works very hard, and they're knitting themselves together with the standard intelligence community apparatus. The communications has improved markedly. The DCI holds his 5:00 threat meeting every day. And I was reading somewhere where it was suggested that the DCI did not have the authority to get people to do things as a result of those meetings. Well, that's just false. It's just false. People will sit there. They'll go over the intelligence. And I know for a fact that people took action as a result of those activities, not just within CIA but within all the other agencies that were connected.

So there is activity that goes on well beneath the surface that people don't see that is keeping the country very safe, very safe-much safer than it was; much more safe than it was in the past. There's much to be done, and so therefore we welcome dealing with the commission's recommendations. But let's not please forget how much has been done in the interim.

REP. HUNTER: I thank the gentleman. The gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. Miller.

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