Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Mr. Wermuth. Mr. WERMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members. I am going to focus my remarks today primarily on my work as the executive project director of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction. Mr. TURNER. All in one breath. Mr. WERMUTH. All in one breath. Also known as the Gilmore Commission, a creation of the Congress now in its 5th year, having submitted four reports to the President and the Congress, with some major policy recommendations; it will submit its fifth and presumably final report in December of this year. In my testimony, I go into considerable detail about the catalog of statutory authority for the use of the military domestically, but it really is important and the previous panel noted the distinctions between the two principal areas of the military mission with respect to the homeland, the homeland defense mission, which really is principally a Department of Defense responsibility to protect the homeland against invasion, and the military support to civil authorities. Those statutes, the authorities that provide that ability of the military to do that, really are based in the Constitution, as I've noted in my testimony. Certainly the Stafford Act's already been mentioned, but of course the insurrection statutes, the expansion of authorities that were originally designed for counterdrug activities have now been expended to include terrorist operations. There is some very special authority in a couple of statutes that I mentioned in my testimony, particularly 10 U.S. Code 382, and 18 U.S. Code 831, that allow the military to be used in some very nontraditional ways even inside the homeland. So the issue here is not whether there is sufficient authority. One of the big issues of course is that authority is not very well understood generally throughout the country in what the military can legally do and how posse comitatus still provides perhaps some measure of a constraint. But the simple fact is the exceptions that have been provided to posse comitatus for use of the military inside the homeland have not made posse comitatus meaningless, as the Congress acknowledged in the Homeland Security Act last year, but there is certainly plenty of authority there for using the military in a number of ways, both for the homeland defense mission, purely military mission, and for providing military support to civil authorities. In that regard, I won't use my time in my opening remarks, but I would hope to get on Congressman Murphy's train in the question and answer session and maybe give you a couple of additional insights or clarifications on that scenario. Certainly we need to do a better job of educating people throughout the country on what the military can and can't do, and particularly how you get to the military. It's important for all of us to understand that a mayor or a Governor can't just walk down to the local Title X military installation and ask the military to do things. There is an appropriate process to do that. That process is now up through a Governor to the Secretary of Homeland Security and then over to the Department of Defense when we are talking about military support to civil authorities. That process is not necessary in the homeland defense mission, but there are issues involving structures and plans and training and exercises that I've talked about at some length in my written testimony. Let me echo what others have said before about the National Guard. The Gilmore Commission in several reports culminating with recapitulation of those and an expansion of those in its fourth report has suggested that we really can and should do more with the National Guard. And you heard the three different areas for use of the National Guard in its purely State status; that means no Federal funds, that it is under the authority of the Governor to do things with the Guard in its State militia hat, if you will. The Title 32 piece, which is Federal funding, and those have manifested themselves a couple of times recently, certainly right after September 11 with security at the airports and more recently under Liberty Shield for protection of critical infrastructure for the Federal Government piece, and then of course bringing them in to a Title X status to do things under the national command authority, normal Title X responsibilities. But the fact is there may very well be some additional authority. Certainly under Title 32 there are adjutant generals out there who believe that they don't even have the authority to use Federal funds to train for certain Homeland Security missions because they don't see them, or their lawyers don't see them as being directly related to their potential Title 10 missions for which Title 32 funds are normally provided. So there certainly ought to be clarification to allow them to do that. The Gilmore Commission, as you will see from my testimony, has proposed perhaps some additional structures and formalizing relationships that would allow the National Guard to be used not in the purely command and control sense but in a new coordination regime that would allow the National Guard to respond to requests from the Department of Defense through U.S. Northern Command maybe even on a multi-state basis to provide assistance when Title X forces may not be indicated or where, as Dennie Reimer said, the Guard provides some additional flexibility that the Title 10 component might not provide. So I've gone through a lot of those in my written testimony, and would be happy to answer any questions related to those and other parts of my testimony in the followup question and answer period. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Mr. Wermuth follows:] RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. Testimony of MICHAEL A. WERMUTH Before the Subcommittee On National Security, Emerging Threats, of the Committee on Government Reform U.S. House of Representatives April 29, 2003 Mr. Chairman and subcommittee Members, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today, to address the important issue of the appropriate use of the Nation's military capability in Homeland Security. My remarks today will be focused primarily on the my relevant research dedicated to, and the resulting, related recommendations of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction (also known as the "Gilmore Commission") (established by Section 1405 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, Public Law 105-261 (H.R. 3616, 105th Congress, 2nd Session) (October 17, 1998)). I will, nevertheless, base some testimony on other research on projects involving various components of the Department of Defense, the White House Office of Homeland Security, and the Department of Homeland Security. You have asked that I address five principal areas: · How do legal constraints restrict DoD deployments in the United States? How does DoD evaluate proposed homeland defense and civil support missions? What types of missions have been accepted and rejected, and what were the Are current force structures, plans and management organizations adequate to support the DoD homeland defense and civil support missions? To what extent do homeland defense and civil support missions affect military operations and personnel tempo? I can certainly address the first and fourth of those areas comprehensively and in a current context. Although I cannot fully address the issue in the third area currently—that information will, I assume, come from Department of Defense witnesses-I can address that area, as well as the second and fifth areas generally and based on my prior experience inside the Department. General Background The Advisory Panel has addressed a number of issues related to the use of the military in the homeland in each of its four Annual Reports to the President and the Congress (December 15 of the years 1999 through 2002). It will continue to do so in its fifth and final report this December. Other important contemporaneous documents have also addressed those issues, including the National Strategy for Homeland Security, issued by the President in July of last year; the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Public Law 107–296 (H.R. 5005, 107th Congress, 2nd Session) (November 25, 2002); and Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5, Subject: Management of Domestic Incidents, issued by the President in February of this year. I will note the relevant provisions of each in the appropriate sections of my testimony, below. How do legal constraints restrict DoD deployments in the United States? The National Strategy for Homeland Security identifies appropriate homeland missions categories for the Department of Defense: |