Remarks
of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
Confronting Foreign Intelligence and Information Gaps
The
New America Foundation
June 23, 2008
As
Prepared for Delivery
Thank you, Steve
Clemons, and thanks to all of you here at the New America Foundation
for the opportunity to speak at an organization that has a reputation
for innovative thinking, and for challenging the status quo when it
comes to public policy. The New America Foundation reminds me a little
of my home state of Wisconsin - a purple state that, like NAF, transcends
the conventional political spectrum.
As some of you
may know, I hold open meetings with my constituents every year in every
one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, and I have been doing this since
I arrived in the U.S. Senate in 1993. From these meetings – now
over 1,100 of them – I have gained a pretty good sense of the
interests and concerns of the very diverse group of Americans that I
represent.
In the last six
years of these listening sessions, foreign affairs generally, and the
war in Iraq specifically, have been the number one issue raised. Like
so many Americans, the anger and resolve Wisconsinites felt after 9-11
have given way to confusion and frustration at this administration’s
disastrous mistake in Iraq.
I hear in my listening
sessions how this administration’s focus on Iraq has drained our
country’s energy and financial resources, undermined our military
readiness, and stymied action on our country’s security and domestic
needs. And yet I also sense people’s readiness – their impatience,
even -- to take on the challenges of our post-9/11 world.
The American people
are ready to face these new challenges, but the federal government is
not. Nearly seven years after 9/11 we still have not translated the
significance of that horrific event – and the responsibility and
opportunity it thrust upon us – into a coherent plan of action.
Instead, we remain mired in and distracted, politically and financially,
by Iraq. As a consequence, many of the same serious problems that made
us vulnerable to al Qaeda’s attack -- in strategic planning, institutional
readiness and allocation of resources -- still remain.
My comments today
are directed at two fundamental and continuing post 9-11 gaps: a gap
in our strategic thinking and a major deficit in our foreign information
and intelligence efforts. Until we address these gaps, our country will
remain vulnerable here at home.
A Mistaken
and Myopic Focus on Iraq
Clearly, the biggest
strategic mistake after 9-11 has been the failure to address the threat
of al Qaeda head on. Instead, we have conflated al Qaeda with Iraq,
and launched a war in Iraq that perpetuates our military, intelligence,
diplomatic and fiscal deficits and leaves us exposed - in fact increases
our exposure – to very real threats to our domestic safety.
Most Americans
now agree that the decision to go to war in Iraq was the wrong response
to the attacks of 9-11. Unfortunately, even some political leaders who
acknowledge this profound mistake seem to think we have no alternative
but to perpetuate it by maintaining a massive open-ended presence in
Iraq. I totally reject this position. We cannot construct an effective
national security strategy that leaves tens of thousands of U.S. troops
in Iraq indefinitely.
The greatest threat
to our national security remains al Qaeda, a stateless network of terrorists,
whose leaders have found safe haven in Pakistan along the Afghanistan
border, and which has a growing number of increasingly dangerous global
affiliates.
If there is a geographic
base to al Qaeda, it is not in Iraq. As Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, testified before Congress earlier this year “the
most likely near term attack on the United States will come from al
Qaeda via [its] safe havens in the under-governed regions of Pakistan.”
Likewise, the Director of National Intelligence stated in a 2008 intelligence
assessment that al Qaeda is now using the Pakistan safe haven to put
into place the last elements necessary to launch another attack against
the U.S.
The Atlantic Council,
chaired by General James Jones, recently concluded:
Afghanistan remains
a dangerously neglected conflict. . . . Yet, what is happening in
Afghanistan and beyond its borders can have even greater strategic
long-term consequences than the struggle in Iraq. Failure would be
disastrous for Europe, North America, and the region. Afghanistan
and neighboring Pakistan are already breeding grounds for insurgency
and terrorism, potentially worse than before September 11th. . . .
And what happens in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan will most likely be influenced
by conditions in Afghanistan.
The war in Iraq
not only diverts the vast bulk of our military resources from the more
immediate threats to our safety in places like Afghanistan, it also
saps our nation’s financial strength and our ability to invest
in our security. Osama bin Laden gave a speech in 2004 in which he stated
that his goal was to bankrupt America. That’s al Qaeda’s
strategic goal – to bankrupt America -- and they have been successful
beyond their dreams as we spend ourselves – our money, our people
and our global goodwill -- into bankruptcy with our misguided focus
on Iraq.
If we are to win
our struggle against those who seek to do us harm, we must regain global
and strategic perspective; reverse this misdirected deployment of our
military resources in Iraq; and realign our military, intelligence,
diplomatic and other resources to address the threats to our nation’s
safety and security that are posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates and
sympathizers.
Deficit
in Strategic Non-Military Resources
We also need to
acknowledge that military resources alone aren’t enough to win
this fight. The 2006 Annual Report of the U.S. Intelligence Community
states that the predominant, immediate threats to our physical safety
are terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
These are asymmetrical threats. Terrorism, and to an important degree
proliferation, arise from stateless groups that are not deterred by
massive weaponry or large standing armies. So, to effectively confront
these threats, we have to move beyond a Cold War security strategy that
emphasizes traditional military force.
This is not a partisan
issue. What I say here today echoes what’s been said by leaders
in this and prior administrations and members of both parties. The 9-11
Commission called for an increase in diplomatic, development and humanitarian
tools. My Nebraska colleague, Senator Chuck Hagel, who serves with me
on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, recently
said "You will never win anything in the long run with just military
power. When you're dealing with terrorism, extremism, poverty, despair,
those are problems far bigger than the military." Senators Biden
and Lugar, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, have both emphasized the need for more effective civilian-led
foreign policy efforts, as have Defense Secretary Gates, Former Deputy
Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former deputy Secretary of Defense
Joseph Nye.
The major strategic
gap in our 21st century preparedness, then, is not a missile gap or
a gap in military personnel and hardware measured against the armies
and arsenals of another state. The major strategic gap is a deficit
in the strength and variety of resources we must bring to bear on the
asymmetric threats of today. An effective 21st century national security
strategy must include improved resources to collect covert and public
information, enhance multilateral diplomacy and prevent proliferation
of nuclear weapons. Our strategy must also encourage participatory,
transparent and fair government around the world, and promote accountability
and the rule of law. That’s because these are key American principles,
and because ineffective, repressive, corrupt and unresponsive governments
can provide breeding grounds for extremism.
Our military increasingly
has taken on the roles of our civilian-led institutions because we have
massive deficits in those civilian agencies -- in financial and human
resources; in cultural and language capabilities; and in coherent, interagency
strategies to anticipate and respond to threats to our national security.
We have to change
our budgetary priorities to address these deficits. Even the greatest
military arsenal in the world can’t ensure the safety of populations
or resolve conflicts around the globe. And yet we continue to spend
hundreds of billions of dollars – borrowed from China, Japan and
oil-exporting countries -- on weapons systems designed for Cold War
conflicts between states with comparable weapon systems.
It is well past
time to shift our strategic thinking – and our corresponding expenditures
and actions – beyond outdated military tools and solutions. Let
me quote Secretary Gates’ budgetary views from his Kansas State
University speech: “We need,” he said, “a dramatic
increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security
– diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic
action and economic reconstruction and development.” One way to
increase this much-needed investment in the civilian instruments of
national security is to cut wasteful spending on weapons programs that
will not help us address our most pressing national security concerns.
These include, for example, the F-22 Raptor, which Secretary Gates has
specifically identified as a weapons system with limited relevance in
counterterrorism operations. It has never flown in Iraq or Afghanistan
yet the Air Force continues to ask for more.
I am pleased that
the President’s fiscal year 2009 budget attempts to increase the
number of Foreign Service officers. As Secretaries Gates and Rice have
said, there are more personnel on a single aircraft carrier task force,
and more lawyers doing work for the Pentagon, than there are Foreign
Service Officers. But, assuming the President’s proposal goes
forward, the net gains are unclear, after accounting for the increased
demands of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Government Accountability Office
reported at the end of last year that, though the Department of State
hired over 1,000 Foreign Service officers above attrition levels between
2002 and 2004, that increase was essentially consumed by the staffing
demands of Iraq and Afghanistan programs. Even our modest efforts to
enhance our civilian capacity, then, are being undermined by Iraq. This
is also true with respect to our foreign information and intelligence
capacity, to which I will now turn.
Intelligence
Gaps
9/11 exposed major
gaps in how intelligence critical to our national security was gathered,
analyzed and used. The 9/11 Commission reviewed those gaps and began
a process of intelligence reform that prompted the creation of the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence. The work is far from complete,
but at least a framework for change has been put in place.
Another great challenge
remains, however -- one that is just as critical to fighting al Qaeda,
as well as other threats to our national security. And, unlike the reform
efforts pursued thus far, it is broader than just the Intelligence Community.
The problem is our deficits in information collection, as well as reporting
and analysis. By “information,” I mean not just intelligence
gathered clandestinely, but also information obtained through diplomatic
reporting and all the overt channels through which our government learns
about the world. Inside and outside the Intelligence Community, our
government has failed to coordinate information collection across different
departments and agencies.
Our foreign information
and intelligence will only be as good as the people we employ to gather
it – and their ability to operate in the places to which we send
them. Yet our intelligence deficit in human resources and collectors
abroad is huge. The Office of the DNI estimates that between 1989 and
2001 – during the administrations of both political parties --
there was a 40% loss in intelligence human resources. Making up for
that loss will take time – after all, it takes five to seven years
to develop an experienced employee. And we are short of experienced
employees. Just consider what the DNI has acknowledged, that two-thirds
of our intelligence-related human resources with responsibilities for
sub-Saharan Africa – an area with ongoing al Qaeda activities
-- have less than five years of knowledge and experience.
The answer to these
deficits in numbers and experience cannot be what the DNI has called
its authority to “lift and shift” people to address the
latest crisis. We need to develop the expertise that only years of study
and experience can produce, and we need to pre-position expert collectors
around the world – before crises arise.
The 2006 Intelligence
Community Annual Report said that the intelligence agencies are “losing
the ‘war for talent,’ finding it difficult to recruit, motivate,
and retain the best candidates for its positions.” More specifically,
the report noted: “[r]ecruiting and retaining high-level skills
in critical languages and scientific and technical fields remains difficult.”
Simply put, our national security depends on overcoming this particular
challenge.
Human resources
is part of a larger set of problems in how we collect and analyze information.
As I will explain, these problems are entrenched and defy the ability
of current institutions to correct them. For that reason, I recently
introduced legislation with Senator Chuck Hagel to establish a Foreign
Intelligence and Information Commission. Our bill will establish an
independent commission to address long-standing, systematic problems
in the collection, reporting, and analysis of foreign intelligence as
well as diplomatic reporting and open source information.
First, as the Director
of National Intelligence has testified, we continue to direct “disproportionate”
resources toward current crises, rather than toward long-term strategic
issues and emerging threats. Second, we don’t have the geographic
distribution of resources we need to anticipate threats around the world.
The lack of “global reach” has also been acknowledged by
the Intelligence Community leadership. And third, we lack a comprehensive
approach to information collection conducted by the U.S. government
as a whole, including not only the Intelligence Community, but also
State Department and other government officers who are based in our
embassies.
This final point
– that the problem, and the solution, are broader than the Intelligence
Community -- has also been acknowledged. Appearing before the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence, Michael Leiter, Director of the United
States National Counterterrorism Center, specifically noted that “much
of the information about the instability that can lead to safe havens
or ideological radicalization comes not from covert collection but from
open collection, best done by Foreign Service officers.” The problem
is that it is not in the power of Mr. Leiter, or anyone in the Intelligence
Community, to make sure that there are enough Foreign Service officers,
in the right places, with the right resources.
To put it simply
– the government does not have a process for asking the following
questions: What do we need to know, not only today but in the future?
Who is best suited to get that information and where do they need to
be? Is our analysis up to the task? And how do we allocate resources,
across agencies, so that these requirements are met with adequate funding
and are focused on prevention, not just reaction? These big strategic
questions are critical to our national security, yet they don’t
get asked, much less answered. These issues extend well beyond the authorities
of the DNI and the jurisdiction of any one congressional committee.
That is why we need an independent commission to finally address them
comprehensively and to make recommendations for the executive branch
and for Congress. I am pleased that the Senate Intelligence Committee
has endorsed this approach by including the Feingold-Hagel bill in legislation
the Committee approved authorizing intelligence activities for the upcoming
fiscal year.
Talking about “information
collection” can sound a little abstract, but the implications
are very real. Take, for example, our ability to address terrorist safe
havens. As recently as the end of January, the State Department’s
counterterrorism chief, Lt. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, publicly expressed
concerns about what our intelligence services know – and don’t
know -- about the threat in the Afghan-Pakistani tribal areas. He said:
“We don’t have enough information about what’s going
on there. Not on al Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban.”
The same could be said about other safe havens identified by the State
Department, including Somalia, the Sahel, and areas of Southeast Asia.
Around the world,
potential instability looms, and political, economic and social conditions
that can contribute to terrorist safe havens persist. The question for
our government is how do we address these challenges, before the crises
arise? Do we need more clandestine collectors in these parts of the
world? Or do we need more political officers in far-flung places so
we can do more robust diplomatic reporting? What does a U.S. embassy
in one of these countries look like, from an interagency collection
and reporting perspective? Are more consulates and out-of-embassy posts
part of the solution? And how do we connect the requirements of our
embassies overseas to Washington, where budget requests and spending
allocations should reflect a broad strategy for collecting information
across different agencies?
An independent
commission will be able to ask, and help to answer, these questions.
It will be able to look at the Intelligence Community, the State Department,
and other departments and agencies to ensure that strategic and budgetary
planning is part of a larger, interagency process. The commission will
consider the role of the National Security Council and the OMB in this
process. And it will look at the problem from top to bottom, interviewing
NSC officials in Washington and visiting country missions overseas.
This would not be a confrontational or accusatory investigation. It’s
an inquiry intended to produce concrete recommendations to fix long-standing
problems. Those recommendations will be of enormous benefit to whoever
the next president is. And it will help Congress as it conducts oversight
and considers the role of the Intelligence Community, the DNI, the State
Department, and other agencies in the context of a broader strategy.
Other Gaps
There are other
significant gaps in our security post-9/11, from this administration’s
inconsistent “freedom agenda,” to our convoluted foreign
assistance strategies, to our domestic infrastructure needs, but I think
I may need a separate invitation for another day to speak about these.
Ultimately, the
gaps that left us exposed here at home to the catastrophic attack we
experienced on 9-11 remain with us. They present us with very real risks
that are being left unaddressed, in part, because of our military presence
in Iraq. The longer we remain in Iraq, the longer we will be unable
to devote the human and financial resources these challenges urgently
need.
I appreciate the
roles that this institution and this audience play in helping to bring
these issues into focus. I am hopeful that our voices, in all their
diversity, will help inform decisions in a new administration that are
in our best and collective interests. Nothing less than America’s
security and future is at stake.
Thank you.
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