At this time we will go to the next panel. Is there anything I guess I should have said, Mr. Decker, that you want to put on the record before we go?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir, if I could make one comment. I would hope in a year from now when this issue is revisited, that it will have been totally sorted out so that we are on an effective path for implementation.

Mr. SHAYS. Guess what? We're going to have you here in 6 months, and we're going to hope in 6 months it's done. Is that a deal?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. And you guys will be pushing the administration, and we will, and we're kind of the catalyst, and they'll do their job,

too.

Mr. DECKER. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

At this time the Chair will announce the second panel. Our second panel is the Honorable James Gilmore III, former Governor of Virginia; chairman, Advisory Panel to Assess the Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's why we call it the Gilmore Commission. I think if you want to have a commission named after yourself, you just give it a long title, and then they just decide to use the chairman's

name.

We have Dr. Michael O' Hanlon, senior fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, the Sydney Stein, Jr. Chair, the Brookings Institution.

We have Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment; and Mr. John Newhouse, senior fellow, Center for Defense Information.

I welcome all four to the panel. I'm going to have you stand up, and stay standing, because I'm going to swear you guys in. If you'd raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. We'll note for the record a response in the affirmative.

Mr. Newhouse, I'm going to have you move your chair over a little slightly.

Dr. O'Hanlon, you can move yours over slightly, too.

OK. We're changing the batting order a bit. We're going to have Governor Gilmore speak first, and then, Dr. O'Hanlon, you'll be second. Mr. Newhouse, we're going to have you third, and we're going to have Mr. Krepinevich be the cleanup batter here.

Let me say to you first, Governor Gilmore, you have been before our committee on a number of occasions, and if it hasn't been you, it's been someone else on the Gilmore Commission, and we appreciate what you did before September 11th, and we appreciate what you're doing now. I have read the testimony that was submitted that was available to me last night, and this is an excellent panel. We're really delighted you all are here. Looking forward to what you'll have to say.

Mr. GILMORE. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much

Mr. SHAYS. I'm going to have you turn that mic on. Let me just do what I said before and ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an opening statement in

the record, and that the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose, and without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted to include their written statements in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

I would say to the witnesses that if you want to touch on any of the questions that you've heard, we forced you to listen to the first panel but if there are some points that you think need to be addressed, feel free to do that. Regretfully, some of your statements are even longer than 10 minutes, so I know you'll have to summarize, so we welcome that, but your statements were excellent. Sorry for the interruption. We'll start all over again, Governor. STATEMENTS OF JAMES S. GILMORE III, CHAIRMAN, ADVISORY PANEL TO ASSESS THE DOMESTIC RESPONSE CAPABILITIES FOR TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION; MICHAEL E. O'HANLON, SENIOR FELLOW, FOREIGN POLICY STUDIES, THE SYDNEY STEIN, JR. CHAIR, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; JOHN NEWHOUSE, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR DEFENSE INFORMATION; AND ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS

Mr. GILMORE. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and I will summarize, I believe, within the timeframe, maybe offer one or two additional thoughts than are contained within the written presentation.

Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to be here with you and with the others not only with the other Members of Congress. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for the chance to be here with you, and particularly my former colleague Governor Janklow, who is an old pal of mine. So nice to see you, Governor-Congressman.

Ladies and gentlemen, the September 11th, of course, has changed everything. It seems to me like that much of what we are doing and what we're thinking about and the way we're evolving as a Nation is simply being driven by the September 11th attack. It certainly was traumatic and continues, in my judgment, to be traumatic to this day, and as a result we're dealing with issues we previously have not dealt with, and we may even deal with them in ways that we probably-would be different than the previous time.

Our reports as you know, we have now four reports. We are the official advisory body to the U.S. Congress. We were established through the House of Representatives. Congressman Curt Weldon, I think, initiated it. The Congress passed it. The Senate did as well, and we're your official panel.

The Commission was accomplished in January 1999. At that time there was no public commission involving this kind of issue. We began to go to work on it. In the first year, in a somewhat academic way, we established a threat assessment. We called it a national strategy. We, I believe, appropriately assessed the threat, and our most recent discussions have confirmed all that.

The second year we did major policy work, recommending an Office of Homeland Security; recommending the formation of a national strategy; focusing on the Federal, State and local involve

ment, not just Federal involvement; focusing on the difficulty of intelligence stovepiping; and beginning to establish, I think, the framework for debate. That was presented to the Congress and to the President in December 2000.

In the year 2001 we focused on some major primary areas and began to get ready to go to business on our 3-year Commission when the September 11th attack occurred. This Congress then in its wisdom extended our Commission 2 more years.

We have now completed our fourth Commission report. I believe each of you has a copy of this report that has been delivered to your offices. We are now beginning our 5th year of-the 2-year extension for our 5th year of the Commission.

What are my opening remarks? No. 1, things have gotten a lot better because we do have these strategies. I think that the committee here is doing a real service to the Congress, to the public, by focusing on the plethora of the different groups of strategies and how they interrelate with each other and how that bears upon our national security. But at least we have strategies. We have the topics being laid out. That is a judgment call in itself in key and important areas. It looks to me like we're in large measure dealing with the correct types of issues.

Our panel in its 3rd year focused our attention on the value and the focus of State and local involvement within the national strategy and how you engage State and local people; a major portion on health care, which has been a primary focus of our Commission through all of its 4 years, the importance of health care in the health care system; the importance of border controls and beginning to watch people going in and out and maybe protect our borders in an appropriate way; the appropriate use of the military, a very profound issue at this time as we begin to key up the U.S. military to operate within the homeland, an extremely sensitive and important policy area; and cyberterrorism. These are the areas that we focused on.

What are the national strategies focused on at this point? There's an overarching strategy for the defense of the United States of a geopolitical position. There is a strategy to counter terrorism; a military plan to operate overseas in order to interdict and disrupt people who would attack us from foreign countries; a homeland security strategy; specific areas of weapons of mass destruction, a strategy for that; money laundering in order to break up the finance for people who would conduct these kind of military operations such as those we saw on September 11th; a cyberterrorism strategy; and a critical infrastructure protection strategy.

This is similar to the types of issues that we laid in over the last 4 years. And all of the topics are beginning in a rough way to come together in the appropriate ways. The trick, it seems to me, is to strive for focus in order to make sure that we come together to do the right things. I think one of the earlier speakers said that we need to get to the proper end state, and indeed we do. We need to focus on what we are trying to get to with these proper strategies, not just simply saying that the Nation shall be more secure, homeland shall be more secure. What are we looking to achieve here? What is the ultimate goal of all of these strategies?

One key, of course, is to continue to tie in the State and the local authorities. Federal strategy alone will not do that, although most of these strategies, I think, do make reference to the role of States and locals within the respective strategies, and that is certainly a positive point. But the truth of the matter is that you have to have a national strategy, not a Federal strategy, and that means that Governors and key mayors and key law enforcement officials all across the 50 States have to be tied in and included within an overall national strategy. We have to determine from their point of view what they need in their respective States, how it develops into a statewide program, how that interacts with their localities, what kinds of equipment and processes are needed in order to support that kind of strategy, how does the Federal Government play that kind of role, how do you develop the joint types of fundings, and then how finally do you get into exercising and then measure the results of what that end state is to be.

So, therefore, there has to be a compete focus on State and local and with the Federal partnership, and that is the end state that our Commission has focused on for several years.

And then I think we have to ask ourselves at the end, what is the goal that we are trying to achieve here? Is absolute security an obtainable goal? Is it attainable? Historically the answer is probably no. This is not a unique time that we face here today, although the violence of the September 11th attack has created a trauma that only replicates itself several times in American history. But we have seen the previous assassination of President McKinley, and then so shortly thereafter, only a few years later, the shooting of Theodore Roosevelt at a political event, the shooting and killing of President Lincoln. One might argue that was, in fact, a terrorist attack in and of itself here in the homeland, the Oklahoma City bombing, a domestic catastrophe of tremendous proportions, lead up of other areas as well. But this is not necessarily a unique time, but we now have to gain the perspective to make sure that as we react to it and we put together our strategies and programs, that we remember the longstanding values that we have as Americans, and that we don't impinge upon any of those.

And that primarily, of course, leads me back to the theme that we very frequently stress, and that is the civil liberties of the American people.

It would be so easy to strive for absolute security and to try to persuade the American people that we are going to reach for absolute security and to ask them to surrender all their civil liberties in order to attain that end. Our Commission believes that would be the wrong approach, and that the goal here must be to gain the maximum possible security within this country and then to tell the American people in a straightforward and honest way that total and absolute security is not possible; to get to the maximum level of security we can reasonably do consistent with the values and safety of the people of the United States, naturally spending a great deal of focus on weapons of mass destruction, because that would be the most terrible possible violation of the security that we might have; but within all those goals, that we believe that the eight strategies are a step in the right direction.

We congratulate this committee for going about the oversight work now of determining how the eight could be harmonized best together and work together for the national security, but I urge you to think closely about the value of making sure the States and the locals are contained within the national strategy.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Governor. It's nice way to start this panel. I had forgotten that Curt Weldon had led the charge on this. He has been one of the heroes, I think, on the issue of terrorism well before September 11th, and I'm not sure he gets the credit he deserves. He gets a lot of credit, but I think he deserves more.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gilmore follows:]