Joshua Haglund Justice and Peace Act of 2006

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to discuss for the next 45 minutes the most important topic that will allow us to protect the homeland, provide for the security of the American people and our allies and our troops around the world: our intelligence.

Last Thursday, Mr. Speaker, I had a meeting with the very able and distinguished chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra). We discussed many things, one of which was a source that I had hoped that we could get some information to assist us in understanding the threats in Iraq and the Middle East, and especially in regard to Iran.

I said to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), I am going to make a prediction to you. Based on my source, I said, common wisdom tells us that the winner of the election in Iran that will take place on Friday and Saturday our time will probably be Rafsanjani. He is the name that most pundits have said would be the likely winner in a two- person runoff against the more conservative and not well-known mayor of Tehran. But I said to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), based on information we had, the election was not going to be close; it will be a landslide. But the conservative mayor of Tehran, a relative unknown, had been anointed by Ayatollah Homeni in Iran and he would in fact win the Iranian election.

We all saw the results, Mr. Speaker, on Saturday night and Sunday morning as, in fact, the mayor of Tehran won the election with a margin of 62 to 38 percent, an overwhelming landslide. I raise this issue, Mr. Speaker, because good intelligence and good information is the most critical tool that we can have over the next several years and decades to protect our homeland.

Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my attention over the past several months that is very disturbing. I have learned that, in fact, one of our Federal agencies had, in fact, identified the major New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11; and I have learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, that Federal agency actually was prepared to bring the FBI in and prepared to work with the FBI to take down the cell that Mohamed Atta was involved in in New York City, along with two of the other terrorists.

I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that when that recommendation was discussed within that Federal agency, the lawyers in the administration at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card, and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident. So we did not allow that Federal agency to proceed.

Mr. Speaker, what this now means is that prior to September 11, we had employees of the Federal Government in one of our agencies who actually identified the Mohamed Atta cell and made a specific recommendation to act on that cell, but were denied the ability to go forward. Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America.

Tonight, I am going to provide some background to my colleagues, because I think this represents a major problem with our intelligence that needs to be focused on by the committees of the House and the Senate, by the leadership of the House and the Senate, by John Negroponte, the new person assigned by President Bush, and a very able man, to integrate the 33 classified systems overseen by the 15 Federal agencies.

I want to also start off by praising Porter Goss, the director of the CIA. Porter served us extremely well in this body as the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and he went over to the CIA with an aggressive agenda to change that agency, and he has begun that process. We, in this body, need to rally the American people to support the efforts brought forward by Porter Goss and to allow John Negroponte to undertake perhaps the most difficult task in protecting the security of America, a task that will not be easy, given the history of our Federal agency system.

Let me take my colleagues back, Mr. Speaker, to 1999. It was, in fact, the spring of 1999 when I was first involved in taking a delegation of 10 Members of Congress to Vienna with the support of my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), and with the support of the Clinton State Department.

The 11-member delegation of five Democrats, five Republicans and myself, along with the State Department employee, traveled to Vienna to meet with five senior leaders of the Russian political parties. Our purpose was to try to reach a framework that could allow for a peaceful resolution of the war in Kosovo on the terms that the U.S. had desired after Ramboullet.

After securing a military plane, my Russian friends told me they were bringing a Serb along with them, a Serb who would be able to understand what we were talking about and help us decide and determine whether or not Milosevic back in Belgrade would accept any recommendations that we would develop. I did not know anything about the Serb. I knew the Russians. But I figure I had better ask the CIA what they knew about this Serb so I could be better prepared, and to make sure that the Serb was not a part of the Milosevic regime, because that would cause myself and my colleagues to be in violation of the Hobbs Act because we were at war with Serbia at that time.

So I called George Tenet. I said, Director Tenet, can you give me some information about this Serb? His family is evidently well known. I need to know whether or not he is a part of the Milosevic regime. I need to know any other information you can provide to me because we are going to meet with him when we travel to Vienna to meet with the Russian leaders to help provide a beginning of a solution to end the war in Kosovo.

He called me back the next day and he gave me a couple of sentences and said not to worry, he was not a part of the Milosevic regime. And he had strong ties to the Communist Party inside of Moscow and had ties to other leaders in the Russian Government. It was not much to go on.

But at the time, Mr. Speaker, I was chairman of the Defense Research Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. My job was to oversee the funding, approximately $40 billion of defense research money on new systems and new technologies. And one of the most striking technologies was the work being done by the Army's Information Dominance Center at Fort Belvoir, formerly known as the LIWA, the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center. I had visited the LIWA several times and was tremendously impressed with not just the ability to provide security for our Army classified systems, but I saw a unique approach to doing well beyond that, data mining, data collaboration, using cutting-edge software tools like Starlight and Spires, able to do profiling. Having plussed-up funding for this facility after talking to George Tenet, I called my friends at the Army's Information Dominance Center and said, can you do something for me as a favor, off the record? And they said sure, Congressman, whatever you like. Would you run me a profile of this Serb, for the same reason I had asked the Director of the CIA. They said, no problem, Congressman; we will get back to you in a few hours. And they did. They gave me 10 pages of information, Mr. Speaker, about the Serb and his ties. Now, the information was not vetted but it was from a number of sources that the Information Dominance Center was able to pull together very quickly. I used that information as we traveled to Vienna to understand who we were meeting with. We had those meetings for 2 days and my colleagues, my five Republican and five Democrat colleagues, worked aggressively to establish a framework that would begin the end of the Kosovo war. In fact, it was historic.

When we returned to Washington several weeks later I was contacted by the FBI and they said, Congressman, we would like to debrief you. We would like you to tell us what you know about that Serb that you all met in Vienna. I said, no problem, I will be happy to do it Monday afternoon in my office. The Friday before the Monday, my D.C. office paged me with a 911 page. When I called them they said, you have got to call CIA Congressional Affairs immediately, which I did. CIA

Congressional Affairs said, Congressman Weldon, we are going to fly two agents to Philadelphia this evening. They will meet you at the airport, at a hotel, at your home, wherever you want to meet them. And I said, I am sorry, I cannot do it. It is a weekend. It is a Friday night. I have got events already planned. What is the urgency of this meeting? And the CIA Congressional Affairs person said well, Congressman, we have been tasked by the State Department to brief our Ambassador, who is negotiating the final terms to end the war in Kosovo, and he needs to know something about this Serb that you met in Vienna. I said, well, the FBI has already called me for that. Can we not do it together? And finally, after pushing back for 10, 15 minutes, the CIA agreed. And so on Monday afternoon in my office I hosted four agents, two FBI and two CIA. These agents asked me four pages of questions about the Serb that I had met with along with our colleagues in the House.

When I finished answering all their questions and giving them all of the information I had, I said to them, now you know where I got my data from, right? And they said, well, you got it from the Russians. I said, no. Well, you got it from the Serb. I said, no. I said, before I left Washington, before I left my office, I called the Army's Information Dominance Center and asked them to do me a favor. They ran a profile and gave me 10 pages. The CIA rep and the FBI rep said, what is the Army's Information Dominance Center, congressman?

It was then, Mr. Speaker, that I knew we had a problem; that our intelligence systems were not linked together, that the stovepipes were so great that we would never be able to deal with emerging transnational terrorist threats. So beginning in the spring of 1999, I began a process working with the Army, and their subgroup working with them, Special Forces Command down in Florida, which had a similar capability to develop a national prototype, a prototype that could be providing support for the President, the National Security Adviser, and all of our policymakers. In fact, working together over a multiweek period, we came up with a plan, a document. And Mr. Speaker, I would like to place this document in the Record at this point in time.

National Operations and Analysis Hub: NOAH

Policy makers' tool for acting against emerging

transnational threats and dangers to U.S. national security.

Policy makers need better decision support tools.

Policy makers continue to work in a vacuum. Briefings and

testimonies are the primary vehicles for transmitting

information to leadership.

The volume of information germane to national issues is

expanding so rapidly that policy makers are overwhelmed with

data.

Policy makers need robust situational awareness over

growing asymmetric threats to national security.

Policy makers need an overarching information and

intelligence architecture that will quickly assimilate,

analyze and display assessments and recommended course of

action from many national agencies simultaneously.

Policy makers need tools to aid them in developing courses

of action against threats to U.S. policy, interests, or

security.

Policy makers need virtual communications with one another.

White House, Congress, Pentagon and at the agency levels

should each have centers they can go to and receive, send,

share, discuss, and collaborate on assessments before they

act.

National Level Collaboration Solution: NOAH, National

Operations and Analysis Hub.

Tasks supported by NOAH's overarching collaborative

environment:

Provide Multi Issue, Multi-agency Hybrid Picture to White

House Situation Room, JCS;

HUMINT Support;

Peackeeping Missions;

Humanitarian Aid;

Battle Damage Assessment;

Develop and Leverage new Technologies of important to

national security;

Support Congressional Committees/Hearings;

Apply Analysis of Foreign Threat to Policy;

Provide Hybrid Situational Awareness Picture of the Threat;

Incorprote Industrial Efforts of Interests to the Policy

Maker;

Link academia directly to policy maker; and

National Emergencies.

NOAH can leverage existing networks to address diverse

issues:

NOAH's Hub Center if linked to other agency centers

electronically;

Each key agency must prossess a Pod Site and be connected

to the NOAH network;

The Pod can consist of a large screen and appropriate

connect for collaboration. Operations Centers can simply be

converted into NOAH;

National Policy makers cannot control agency Pods, agencies

must post replicated data on the NOAH system so that sister

groups can access data;

Support multi-level security requirements and can sanitize

and ``push'' data to many types of users to many levels;

NOAH can address National, law enforcement and military

needs. The situation will determine the mission;

Ties policy maker, military and law enforcement together;

Goals of the NOAH Hub Center is to apply agency operations,

strategies analysis, tactical assessments to a course of

action for the policy maker; and

Optimizes group of expertise within each organization--

experts always on hand regardless of issue.

NOAH and Pod Site Network:

Part of national policy creation and execution system;

Will existing sites and connectivities where available;

Will share tools available at LIWA IDC so every agency has

same tools;

All agencies will post data on NRO highway in a replicated

format sensitive to classification;

NOAH's Global Network will use NRO System as backbone;

All centers connect to other centers electronically; and

Mechanism for gathering, analyzing, displaying, tailoring,

and disseminating all kinds of information quickly at the

national level.

Overview--National Operations and Analysis Hub:

Center dedicated to National Policy Makers at White House,

Congress and National Agencies;

Provides system of system advanced technological

communications environment to harvest, analyze, display data

as needed;

Coordinate and synchronize information among IC, S&T

centers, military services;

Provide near real time situational awareness at the

national level;

Link virtually via a pod site to every participating member

agency; and

Pod sites designed to pull together agency resources on

single system of systems.

NOAH's is staffed by members from participating agencies.

The staff has a 24 x 7, high bandwidth, virtual connectivity

to experts at agency Pod Sites. This provides decision makers

with real-time situational awareness of adversary picture and

courses.

Steps to Achieve NOAH Capability:

Establish baseline capability by building initial Hub

Center and congressional virtual hearing room. Equip White

House Situation Room to Collaborate with these sites;

Staff the Hub Center with two reps from each of the 28 key

participating agencies;

Link up NOAH internal and external collaborative

environment;

Hook in Back up Site for redundancy and begin training on

collaborative tools;

Build the 28 Key Agency Pod Sites along model of the

Information Dominance Center at Fort Belvoir, VA;

Link all Pod Sites to NOAH hub center establish Protocols

for Inter-agency data sharing;

Exercise live ability to retrieve, collate, analyze,

display disparate data and provide policy makers course of

action analysis at the NOAH Hub Center; and

Refine procedures and Protocols.

Agencies Represented in the National Collaborative Center:

Central Intelligence Agency; Defense Intelligence Agency;

National Imagery and Mapping Agency; National Security

Agency; National Reconnaissance Office; Defense Threat

Reduction Agency; Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army/LIWA; Air

Force; Navy; Marine Corps; Joint Counter-Intelligence

Assessment Group; ONDCP; and FBI.

Drug Enforcement Agency; U.S. Customs; National Criminal

Investigative Service; National Infrastructure Protection

Center; Defense Information Systems Agency; State Department;

Five CINCs; Department of Energy; Department of Commerce;

Department of the Treasury; Justice Department; Office of the

Secretary of Defense; National Military Command Center; and

National Joint Military Intelligence Command.

Elements to be connected to the national collaborative

center would include the White House Situation Room, a

Congressional Virtual Hearing Room and a possible redundant,

or back-up site.

This document, as you can see, Mr. Speaker, is entitled the NOAH, National Operations and Analysis Hub, Policy Makers' Tool for Acting Against Emerging Transnational Threats and Dangers to U.S. National Security. This 9-page briefing, Mr. Speaker, was put together in the spring of 1999.

I asked the Deputy Secretary of Defense, John Hamre, to take a look at this capability. He went down to the LIWA and he came back and he said, Congressman, you are right. I agree with you. This capability is amazing. It offers unlimited potential. How about sending me a letter describing your interest, Congressman?

So on July 30, 1999, I sent this 3-page letter to Deputy Secretary John Hamre, Deputy Secretary of Defense, at his request, talking about creating an integrated collaborative center for all of our intelligence. I would like to place this letter in the Record at this point in time, Mr. Speaker

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC, July 30, 1999.

Hon. John Hamre,

Deputy Secretary of Defense,

The Pentagon, Washington, DC.

Dear Dr. Hamre: I believe the time has come to create a

central national level entity that can acquire, fuse and

anaylze disparate data from many agencies in order to support

the policy maker in taking action against threats from

terrorism, proliferation, illegal technology diversions,

espionage, narcotics, information warfare and cyberterrorism.

These challenges are beginning to overlap, thereby blurring

their distinction while posing increasing threats to our

Nation.

Before we take action to counter these emerging threats, we

must first understand their relationship to one another,

their patterns, the people and countries involved, and the

level of danger posed to our Nation. The Department of

Defense has a unique opportunity to create a centralized

national center that can do this for the country. It would be

patterned after the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity

(LIWA) at Fort Belvoir, but would operate on a much broader

scale. This entity would allow for near-time information and

analysis to flow to a central fusion center, which I would

designate the National Operations Analysis Hub (NOAH). I

think this title is fitting, as NOAH will provide a central

hub built to protect our nation from the flood of threats.

NOAH would be comprised of a system of agency-specified

mini-centers, or ``pods'' of participating agencies and

services associated with growing national security concerns

(attachment 1). NOAH would link the policymaker with action

recommendations derived from fused information provided by

the individual pods. NOAH would provide the automation and

connectivity to allow the pods to talk together, share data

and perspectives on a given situation in a near real-time,

computer-based environment.

The NOAH center in the Office of the Secretary of Defense

would be comprised of representatives from an initial cluster

of pod sites to include: CIA, DIA, National Imagery and

Mapping Agency (NlMA), NSA, NRO, Defense Threat Reduction

Agency (DTSA), JCS, Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps,

ONDCP, FBI, DEA, Customs, National Criminal Investigative

Service (NCIS), National Infrastructure Protection Center.

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), State, the five

CINCS, DOE, INS, Commerce. Treasury.

Elements which would be connected into NOAH would include

the White House Situation Room, a Congressional Virtual

Hearing Room and a possible redundant (back up) site.

The benefits of creating a NOAH include:

For national policy makers, a national collaborative,

environment offers situations updates across a variety of

issues and offers suggested courses of action, based on

analysis, to help government officials make more informed

decisions.

For the Intelligence Community, a national collaborative

environment will help end stovepiping and create more robust

strategic analyses as well as near real-time support to field

operations.

For military commanders and planners, a national

collaborative environment offers full battlefield

visualization, threat profiling, robust situational

awareness, as well as near real-timer support to special

missions such as peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, national

emergencies or special operations.

For law enforcement, a national collaborative environment

provides investigative and threat profiling support, and

field station situational awareness.

Along with its system of connected agency pod sites, NOAH

would permit the display of collaborative threat profiling

and analytical assessments on a large screen. It would be a

national level operations and control center with a mission

to intergrate various imagery, data and analytical viewpoints

for decision-makers in support of national actions. I see

NOAH as going beyond the capability of the National Military

Command Center (NMCC) and the National Joint Military

Intelligence Command (NJMIC), providing recommended courses

of action that allow us to effectively meet those emerging

challenges from asymmetrical threats in near real-time. Given

its mission, I believe that NOAH should reside in the Office

of the Secretary of Defense (Attachment 2).

I am aware of the initiative to link counterintelligence

groups throughout the community. I am also aware of the

counterterrorism center at the CIA, the new National

Infrastructure Protection Center at the FBI, and a new HUMINT

special operations center. I have heard of an attempt to

connect the Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and OSD

assets with federal, state and local law enforcement

agencies. I also have seen what the Army has done at LIWA,

which has created a foundation for creating a higher-level

architecture collaborating all of these efforts. Each of

these independent efforts needs to be coordinated at the

national level. I believe LIWA has created a model that

should be used as a basis for creating the participating

agency pod sites.

I do not expect that establishment of NOAH should exceed

$10 million. Each agency involved could set up its own pod to

connect with the central NOAH site or to exchange data with

any of its participants. Each agency could dedicate monies to

establish their own pod site, while the $50 million available

in DARPA for related work could be used to establish the NOAH

structure immediately.

The NOAH concept of a national collaborative environment

supporting policy and decision-makers mirrors the ideas you

have expressed to me in recent discussions, and it is a

tangible way to confront the growing assymetrical threats to

our nation. I have a number of ideas regarding staffing

options and industry collaboration, and would appreciate the

opportunity to discuss them with you. Thank you for your

consideration. I look forward to hearing from you at your

earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Curt Weldon,

Member of Congress.

Secretary Hamre was interested and he told me, Congressman, I will even pay the bill. The Defense Department will provide the funding for this. And I do not care where they put it, Congressman. It could be at the White House, it could be at the NSC, wherever it is most appropriate, but I will pay the bill. But, Congressman, the problem is not with me or the money. You have got to convince the CIA and the FBI that this is something they want to pursue.

In fact, he wrote me a letter, Mr. Speaker, dated October 21, 1999: ``Dear Congressman Weldon, I wholeheartedly agree that combating asymmetrical threats challenging national security requires a collaborative interagency approach as suggested in your concept of the National Operations Analysis Hub. We are actively engaged in assessing how the department should leverage ongoing activities and develop a long-term strategy along these lines. I will keep you apprised of our progress. I would be happy to meet with you on the subject.''

And then he puts a personal comment on the note that I will read. ``Sir, this is a mealy-mouth response because no one wants to commit to a LIWA-based solution. You know I am very impressed by LIWA and see them involved in a range of activities. I would like to get together with you to review some of our thinking when you have time. John.''

Mr. Speaker, I would like to place this in the Record.

Deputy Secretary of Defense,

Washington, DC, October 21, 1999.

Hon. Curt Weldon,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Weldon: I wholeheartedly agree that

combatting the asymmetrical threats challenging National

Security requires a collaborative, inter-agency approach, as

suggested in your concept of the National Operations Analysis

Hub. We are actively engaged in assessing how the Department

should leverage ongoing activities and develop a long-term

strategy along these lines.

I will keep you apprised of our progress, and I would be

happy to meet with you on this subject.

Sincerely,

John J. Harme.

Mr. Speaker, that was in October of 1999 at John Hamre's suggestion on November 4 of 1999, almost 2 years before 9/11. I had John Hamre and the representatives of the CIA and the FBI in my office. And at John Hamre's suggestion, we went through the 9-page briefing to create an overarching national collaborative center. When I finished the briefing which had been prepared for me with our intelligence officials off the record, the CIA said, Congressman Weldon, that is all well and good, but we really do not need that capability. It is not necessary. We are doing something called CI-21; and, therefore, we do not need to pursue that multi-system approach that you have outlined where we bring in all of these other classified systems.

I was very unhappy with that response because I knew full well the Army and our special forces commands were using that capability at that very moment in a special project against al Qaeda.

So, Mr. Speaker, in 1999 and in 2000 and in 2001, I put language in each of our defense bills calling for the creation of a national collaborative center to bring together our disparate intelligence capabilities and systems for 3 consecutive years. And, in fact, one of

those bills required a response by the CIA as to why this system had not been put into place.

But in the meantime, on November 12, 1999, the Defense Information and Electronics Report published an article about the need for a massive intelligence network for shared threat information. On April of 2000, Signal Magazine did another story on a fusion center concept taking root as we kept pushing this process.

Mr. Speaker, the following are both of these articles:

[Nov. 12, 1997]

Defense Information and Electronics Report