Mr. SHAYS. But how many different divisions do you have to interact with? I want to get a handle on the territory.

Mr. HINTON. Within GAO, all of them. And we have a lead role, like a lead agency concept. Our division has the lead in terms of strategically thinking through the programs and bringing the other divisions to work with us on the issues as we see the need to do

SO.

For example, we recently issued a report in December of this past year on the FBI in terms of its role and its funding. Mr. Rabkin did that as part of a network that we had within GAŌ. And as we cut across the other issues, we'll do that. And when I look at our units, Mr. Chairman, the role that we have played in the division that I head up is looking across the entire spectrum, and where we've had issues. It might go down the HHS track or to Justice or the law enforcement community.

I've looked at the others, but take a vertical cut in doing that work for us so that we can have a complete picture.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me be really specific. Do you have the authority from the Comptroller to be the lead person? I mean ultimately are you the one held accountable for the whole issue of terrorism, or is that somewhat an unresolved issue?

Mr. HINTON. Within GAO I would probably say I have, at this point, the largest responsibility within the

Mr. SHAYS. That's not the same, though. And it's something that I would want to talk to the Comptroller about, because ultimately there needs to be one person who is held accountable for this whole effort, I think, within GAO.

And that will be our responsibility, but you might express a concern to the Comptroller.

Mr. HINTON. In answer to that, there is not an express direction by anyone in GAO. What we have is a strategic planning process that builds the elements for that

Mr. SHAYS. Now, this committee parallels GAO in the sense I'm not talking about subcommittee, I'm talking about quorum committee-we have this 360 degrees jurisdiction of government programs, much like appropriations does. They have it for spending, we have it for looking at waste, fraud and abuse in government programs. So within your GAO there exists that 360 degrees jurisdiction.

What we did in this committee is we spun off some responsibilities that we had to Justice, we spun off to another committee, but we wanted to make sure that we focused on national security, intelligence, veteran's affairs, we thought they were all united. But the one thing we kept clear in the 360 degrees jurisdiction was terrorism.

So we have it for every element, and we intend to utilize I think that opportunity. And the more we have been trying to sort out what this committee is going to focus in on, the more convinced I am that out biggest opportunity is to do what Mr. Mica is doing on the drug side within every government agency in prevention, interdiction and so on, we're going to look at the terrorist side.

Let me conclude with this question: Do you concur, whether you concur, let me put it this way. I believe, and I believe many people who get involved in the terrorist issue believe that a terrorist attack or attacks will occur in the United States. And it's really a

question of when these attacks will occur, what kind of attack and where.

And is it your general opinion that we have made good progress in getting a handle in organizing both the anti-terrorist and counter-terrorist effort; do you feel that we are making significant headway in HHS and their role once a terrorist attack occurs, that we're bringing in the Justice Department and the FBI in terms of their responsibilities, FEMA and so on; do you think that we have made significant progress?

Mr. HINTON. I think there has been quite a bit of progress that has been made over the last couple of years on that score, Mr. Chairman. In fact, I think in setting up Mr. Clark's situation to oversee that, though he does not have an authority to direct the agencies. Nevertheless, he is in a coordination role.

But we have also seen money being made available to the individual agencies to enhance their efforts and get the initiatives going up. The questions that we have been raising from our work, though, is that where does it all take us; what is the end state, and how does the Federal game plan fit together in a comprehensive way, and what is the long-term spending initiative that we want to have.

And a key part of that is making some sound threat and risk assessments as part of the process. We haven't seen that done. Therefore the real question we have is where money is going right now, are we targeting the money in the absence of these risk assessments to the highest priority programs and activities that we as a Nation need to be funding? That is not clear yet.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Let me ask Mr. Blagojevich, and see if he has any questions.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hinton, in your testimony you describe differences between conventional threats and threats of chemical or biological weapons.

Although you state that terrorists are less likely to use chemical and biological weapons, don't we also have to factor in the potential harm which in the case of chemical or biological weapons could be much, much greater?

Mr. HINTON. Yes. That's the concept that we work through, yes. Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. Could you elaborate on that, please?

Mr. HINTON. Well, I think that's one of the threats that clearly we need to be cognizant of and try to plan how we will react as a Nation against that threat and how we would manage the consequences of an action that we did indeed have.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. The Attorney General also announced plans to move the NLB Domestic Preparedness Program from the Department of Defense to the Department of Justice. Somebody suggested that FEMA should take the program because of their traditional emergency response. Wouldn't it, moving it to Justice, call for even greater coordination with some of the training programs already operated by Justice?

Mr. HINTON. Sir, we haven't really done an assessment of the pros and cons of that decision. I think there are probably several alternatives available. FEMA could be one, EPA could be one, surely Justice could be one.

Key, I think, in terms of looking at the decision as it is made is to make sure that we understand the pros and cons of it, and when that decision is indeed made.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. Can you give us a timeframe on when you think you might have a decision on that?

Mr. HINTON. Right now we're not presently looking at that. As you know, the tentative decision is to move responsibility over in 2001. For the most part, I think that's where the administration is leaning to do it.

I have not looked at the analysis around that. If that's something that the committee would like, we'd certainly be happy to entertain doing that.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. One of the concerns with the domestic preparedness program that I've heard is that State and local first responders were confused about the number of different programs and resources that would be available to them. In a hearing before this subcommittee the last time, representatives of the Attorney General announced the creation of a new national domestic preparedness office at the FBI.

Will this office be able to reduce confusion and streamline equipment lists and personnel requirements?

Mr. HINTON. I think it's a step in the right direction, Congressman. Through the work we have done, we've heard the same concerns from people we have talked to. And I think setting that office up and providing the services that are planned for it to provide will offer a kind of one-stop shopping for many of the training programs and will probably help mitigate a lot of the confusion that is out there right now. And I think from that vantage point it will probably be viewed as a good step.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Hinton.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman. I would like to spend a few minutes and ask a couple of general questions, and since I just joined the hearing, excuse me if I repeat anything that's been asked.

First of all, terrorist threats can be numerous. They can be domestic, or they can be overseas involving an embassy or our airlines. We've seen the World Trade Center, a commercial center at risk. We have hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans around the world and American schools overseas that could have a problem.

I have become more and more convinced as we examine this whole problem area that you can't build a concrete wall or bombproof barrier or terrorist-proof facility around every individual facility.

What appears to be one of the wisest expenditures of funds is for intelligence. Is that a proper assumption, and what kind of emphasis is being placed in your opinion, your study, on the question of intelligence versus hardening?

Mr. HINTON. Mr. Mica, there is no question from where we sit that intelligence is a very, very important component of the Federal picture back there. And it is very key, and it is an enabler to help us prevent, help the government prevent any known or planned actions against it.

And I think when you look across the entire government plan, there has got to be balance in that, in the whole strategy. Intelligence is a big part of it.

Taking other actions around physical security and also consequence management, they are all components of the total government plan. And so I think it becomes one of balance and a funding decision.

Mr. MICA. Well, again, I'm wondering if you've done any examination. We talked about risk assessment, and how much money we were spending, again, on hardening versus intelligence. Are there any specific recommendations that you have for us? I haven't read through this report here, the statement.

Mr. HINTON. Right. We have made recommendations, Mr. Chairman, in terms of the threat risk assessments. We have not seen them yet, but they've been done. We think that is an important decision support tool that has been used in the private and public sectors. It helps you look at your threats, assess the vulnerabilities of those threats, prioritize efforts to mitigate against those threats and helps decide on where you want to put the funding.

Intelligence is a key part of that process too, the human intelligence aspects are important, too. But it's part of a process that helps you think through the risk that is involved and helps you establish a good process for weighing the resources that you're going to apply to assess risk.

Mr. MICA. I just left a closed briefing on the narcotics issue. One of the things that was brought to light was the resistance on the Senate side to spend adequate funds for intelligence.

Are you aware of requests that have been unmet in the area of, again, going after terrorist threats, anything that the Congress hasn't done that should be done? You know, I'm not asking you to point a finger, but I just was told that there is reluctance on the part not so much of Members, but of staff on the Senate side to not properly fund intelligence activities.

Mr. HINTON. Mr. Mica, I am not aware of that. It doesn't mean that is not a real situation, I am just not aware of that from the work that we have done.

Mr. MICA. And then the other question is the way the money is spent. I sat on this subcommittee early on and I had the unfortunate experience as a Member of Congress to speak at the graduation of a young man in my district who several months later, almost a year later, ended up serving in Saudi Arabia and was killed, murdered in the Khobar Towers incident.

Of course we took every measure possible after that, and I think we expended a third of a trillion dollars total in force protection. We then went back to Saudi Arabia and some of our other posts to look at how the money was spent.

I was sort of stunned at the array of gadgetry that had been acquired. Do we overreact when we we intended to try to get in as much protection for the forces as possible, but I saw some of these gadgets that had been purchased that may or may not ever be used, may or may not be suitable to, say, desert conditions.

What is your assessment of, again, the equipment? The same thing happened after TWA 100, we spent a tremendous amount of

money. You go through the airport now and they've got these very expensive, I understand, detection equipment for explosives.

How cost-effective is this? Are we spending money that we don't need to be spending when people suddenly have their attention fo

cused?

Mr. HINTON. Mr. Mica, you're raising a very good question that comes back to the issue of having good, sound threat and risk assessments. You go through and take those, you do it by facility, you can do it by location, you can do it by sites or whatever like that, and you ask a lot of key questions around those assessments to try to gauge what the threat might be, weigh the risk and if you have gaps in the known information out there, you can set forth a plan of action that might involve the type of equipment that you need to fill the gaps that you see.

Because we haven't seen those types of threat and risk assessments done in this area, we don't have the assurances that we're putting the right money, in your scenario there, maybe the right equipment, to fix some of the gaps that are out there. We haven't seen that.

So I think your point is right on the mark. I think it needs to be something that's asked constantly of the executive branch when they come before you, and to ask well, what is the request that you're asking for the funds truly based on, so that you can have a gauge. Are we targeting the money to the right programs and, is it the right level of the resources?

Mr. MICA. Again, with some of this equipment, I just couldn't see the practical application. We fund the money, and then it looks like a lot of the purchases of equipment that should be utilized to minimize a threat, the purchases are based on vendor promotion and vendor grabbing for the Federal dollar that's been made available. Do you focus on any of that or are you directed to that problem? Mr. HINTON. We haven't looked into it in depth, Mr. Mica. We are aware of how the money has been allocated. Some of the contracting that has been done. But we have not looked into the economies and efficiencies around the individual actions.

Mr. MICA. Well, again, I strongly believe in risk assessment, cost benefit analysis, and what makes sense to you. Look at where the risk is, you go after it. That's why we come back to intelligence.

If we had just a little bit more intelligence in Khobar Towers, we wouldn't have had a Khobar Towers. And then you look at practical solutions. I think we lost 19 young men there. Things like mylar on some of the windows, a lot of people died from glass shards. And just simple things.

I asked the State Department, I think it was last week, based on the experience we had, about some of these simple cost-effective measures, the cautionary things, programs to enlighten personnel that are again, all over the planet at risk 1,000 different ways, 1,000 times a week, and I've been trying to get a handle on what is cost effective.

To your knowledge are we taking what you consider cost-effective steps to deal with the terrorism problem?

You know, again, specifically I pointed to the State Department, the other agencies with proposals in here that may cost us more