We have also established a Nuclear Biological Chemical (NBC) Working Group. This specialized group is examining our government's capacity to respond to NBC threats.

While

I cannot go into detail in open session, I can assure you that the federal government has substantial capacity to respond to threats of nuclear terrorism. We are working to develop similar capacities to respond to chemical and biological threats. The NBC working group has also developed an active program of exercises to test our response capability. Various exercises have involved the federal government alone, the federal government coordinating with state and local government, and the federal government acting with other countries.

What Remains to be Done?

The relative scarcity of high tech terrorism up until now gives us no basis for complacency. While I have offered some views about relative threat levels, I must emphasize to you that assessments grounded on predicting terrorist behavior cannot be taken as protection. There is too much uncertainty.

It should be clear that to some extent there is a race between terrorist adaptations of new technologies and the development and application of countermeasures. A key factor will be the U.S. Government's ability to conduct research into countermeasures quickly and effectively. believe it only prudent that we devote more money to these R&D efforts.

I

There are also ways in which Congress can help without straining the federal budget. We should work together to examine the possibility of requiring that taggants be included in all explosives, weapons, and ammunition manufactured in or imported into the United States. Such a measure would greatly simplify efforts to detect concealed explosives and weapons and improve our ability to

investigate terrorist acts which have already occurred. We should also explore the possibility of taggants for

detonators.

Congress has before it pending legislation which would help control the importation, production and possession of non-metallic firearms. This is an area of special concern to the airline industry, indeed to the entire counter-terrorism community. I urge quick and favorable Congressional action on this legislation.

Conclusion

I congratulate the Committee for its initiative in convoking these hearings to examine the risks of high

technology terrorism. While the counter-terrorism

community's assessment is that current risks are modest, the long-term picture is much less clear. One of the ironies we face is that successful protection of more and more targets may drive terrorists to use higher technologies. That is why it is so important that we work together to turn the new technologies to our advantage in fighting terrorism.

Senator LEAHY. Now, I wonder if you gentlemen would mind if I invite Dr. Kupperman and Mr. Woolsey to come up to the table? Please stay there, Mr. Revell and Mr. Ambassador. We will get more microphones.

Mr. Ambassador, in your statement on page 14, you said you established nuclear-biological-chemical, or NBC, working groups. I am going to be following up with questions later on on that.

Could you just give us a little bit more about what that does? Ambassador BREMER. Well, in open session I think I can only make a few general points. First of all, the purpose of that group is to try to analyze for us the kinds of threats which we may face in NBC terrorism in the years ahead and, second, to examine our capacity to prevent or react to threats or actual use of such terrorism.

Senator LEAHY. Do you feel that that group is getting the type of support that it needs both financially and within the various departments involved with it?

Ambassador BREMER. It seems to be so far. I would like to point out, Senator, as I pointed out in my statement, that we are also putting quite a lot of emphasis in our research and development, particularly into the areas of biological and chemical terrorism.

We have a small research and development budget which my office manages for the executive branch in counterterrorism technologies. One of the main areas of emphasis has been precisely this area, the detection of biological and chemical agents. I think it is money very well spent and I hope we will be able to count on congressional support for that money in the years ahead.

Senator LEAHY. I think anyone who has had some of the briefings on that would be supportive.

Dr. Kupperman, I first heard this expression "computer virus" from you a couple of years ago, and I may have read more about it prior to that, but I do not recall. Since you have given me some idea of it, I have started seeing it here and there into the lexicon of concerns that we have to face.

Would you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mr. KUPPERMAN. Sure; computer viruses are, in effect, lines of code, computer code. They replicate and they are often designed to take out large hunks of an existing program. They are injected, in a way, into a system's software and can take out thousands of lines of code.

Some call them computer worms. The British call them logic bombs. They can destroy massive investments in systems software. They behave as a virus, in a way, because they replicate and in some cases they are timed to die.

Senator LEAHY. In some cases, timed to die. Do you mean they come in, do their damage, and are gone?

Mr. KUPPERMAN. Yes.

Senator LEAHY. And you do not find them?

Mr. KUPPERMAN. That is right. You do not have the same success which you would with the normal biological analog of antibodies. Senator LEAHY. And are you aware of the computer virus question that was raised in Israel?

Mr. KUPPERMAN. Yes, I am quite aware of it. It was very frightening to a lot of the security authorities because the computer sys

tems that were involved in Israel were linked to more than purely academic networks. They had links to governmental networks as well, and the security implications are really horrendous.

A virus must be distinguished from the computer hacker who somehow finds a password and gets into an unclassified or even a classified system. The hackers are not destroying the system; they are only obtaining access to information-and I am not trying to minimize that-

Senator LEAHY. They are reading it?

Mr. KUPPERMAN. Yes, getting information, even diverting funds-whereas with the computer virus tremendous destruction

can occur.

Senator LEAHY. Dr. Kupperman, I am anticipating some of your remarks in your overview. I will turn it back to you and then to Mr. Woolsey for your overview. Then I want to get back to some questions for the four of you.

PANEL CONSISTING OF ROBERT H. KUPPERMAN, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES; AND R. JAMES WOOLSEY, SHEA & GARDNER

STATEMENT OF ROBERT H. KUPPERMAN

Mr. KUPPERMAN. Well, I really want to start off by saying that both Mr. Revell and Ambassador Bremer and their organizations have done extraordinary work and a lot has been accomplished over the past 4 or 5 years or so, particularly the increasing emphasis which has been given to every aspect of terrorism.

On the other hand, I think we are in our infancy in our understanding of the physical and crisis ramifications and the policy implications of high-tech terror, whatever its probability of occur

rence.

I think one thing that everyone in the business will agree to is that in some respects terrorism has become far more sophisticated. In the case of the Kuwaiti airliner hijacking, it may have used less sophisticated technologies but the hijackers were trained, they operated efficiently, they knew what they were doing. They understood the airplane, they understood the need to move people around, they understood the counter-psychological techniques to avoid the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, et cetera. They made it almost impossible for a rescue team to be effective.

Indeed, I think that what has happened short of the Kuwaiti incident and the recent explosions in Naples and the arrest of the Japanese terrorists in the United States is that the number of splashy incidents, the incidents that make the headlines, has diminished since the attack on Libya in 1986.

But terrorism, I tell you the obvious, is an unpleasant subject, and when times are calm we have every tendency, I think, to forget it. Nevertheless, in the view of many serious students of terrorism and, more generally, low-intensity conflict, of which terrorism probably is a part, the next administration is not going to be immune from truly devastating attacks.

These are going to occur with increased frequency in many parts of the world, and American interests abroad and Americans themselves are going to be a primary target. I think that we have got to

get our act together in terms of what may happen here in the United States. The next administration must face these problems; they are just not going to go away.

When the Reagan administration first came into office, it treated terrorism seriously, but it got so involved with Central America that it began to ignore the problem until embassies began to blow up. I am not talking about the FBI now. I am talking about the degree of emphasis that the White House placed upon the subject. The April 1986 attack in Libya, I think, went a long way toward abating some of our more recent terrorism problems. It was not until 1986 that we took, I believe, a really concerted, steady effort, and I do compliment the Reagan administration for this.

Intelligence and police cooperation, as well as the sharing_of technology and tactics among our allies has never been better. Despite the Iran Contra mess, the efforts of State, Defense, the National Security Council, and the FBI have been of immeasurable value.

Yet, we are now only prepared to deal with yesterday's terrorists. The biggest problem we may face is the emergence of a different breed of terrorist, one with far greater technological talents than we have seen to date, one whose motivation is not fully understood by us. We are unprepared, in my view, to deal with such terrorists.

Our tough-line policy of no concessions to terrorists has got to be upheld if we are going to be able to deal at all from a coping point of view, but the policy will be sorely tested. We lost for a while, embarrassingly, when we had the arms-for-hostages trade in response to far lesser problems than we may see in the future.

We need to think in larger terms, including the challenges posed to emergency preparedness and mobilization by truly devastating terrorist attacks. We must also think in non-traditional military terms and deal with terrorism as part of a continuum of unconventional warfare for which there is no adequate definition and, frankly, no doctrine whatsoever.

All that has been done domestically and internationally is good, but I do not think we have gone far enough. I think the consequences of these attacks are so vast, the technology so available to so many groups, that we cannot ignore the problem, even if we tend to believe or wish to believe that their likelihood is low.

The biggest threat we face is our own complacency. In fact, the terrorist can cause us the most damage by being quiet for a while. We will, of course, respond to their silence-I am talking about our political response, not that of the agencies involved by ignoring the problem.

For more than a decade, two questions have plagued the law enforcement community. Will international terrorism come to the United States? Will terrorists employ technologically sophisticated tactics? These questions have not been answered. Yet, most analysts whom I know feel that it is inevitable, that it is just absolutely certain that international terrorism is going to come here at some point. And the Bureau, I think, has successfully dealt with some actual cases which they would have to discuss in classified session.