Opening Statement of Chairman Dianne Feinstein
Joint SSCI/HPSCI Hearing: 10th Anniversary of 9/11
September 13, 2011
Thank you very much, Chairman Rogers.
It‟s a very special thing for us to be in the House and to see these most palatial quarters. In the
Senate we work in a much humbler way. I just want you to know that.
I am very pleased to join you, and have our Committees meet together for the first time since the
2002 HPSCI-SSCI “Joint Inquiry” into the attacks of September 11.
I also congratulate you on the House passage of the FY-12 Intelligence Authorization bill, and
thank you for the cooperation that has enabled us to pre-conference the legislation. I look
forward to Senate action and enactment of the third straight intelligence bill after a six year
hiatus.
I‟d also welcome our witnesses, Director Clapper and Director Petraeus. I thank you for being
here.
I believe important and substantial progress has been made in U.S. intelligence collection and
analysis in the past 10 years.
We are often asked the question, “Are we safer today?” The answer, I believe, is an unqualified
“Yes.” That is not to say that terrorist attacks can always be stopped, but it is to say that the
intelligence world has learned and adapted to the challenge.
Stovepipes are down; intelligence is shared and streamlined in ways that it never was before
9/11. Last week, the Intelligence Community learned of a new threat to the Homeland around the
10th anniversary of 9/11. That information was shared throughout the Intelligence Community,
with the Congress, with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to take protective
measures, and with state and local governments all within about one day. That is real progress.
Both SIGINT and HUMINT have improved: I can‟t detail the efforts here, but intractable
problems have been overcome to produce key information to policymakers.
We have had some real counterterrorism successes. Witness the take down of Bin Laden and the
high number of al-Qaeda leaders killed or captured recently. In fact, more than one half of alQaeda‟s top leadership has been eliminated according a speech in June by John Brennan,
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Consider the following
top AQ leaders killed or captured since last summer:
Usama Bin Laden;
Al Qaeda's new #2 Atiyah Abd al-Rahman;
Top AQ operative Yunis al-Mauritani;
Ilyas Kashmiri, one of al-Qaeda's most dangerous commanders reportedly killed;
The #3 al-Qaeda leader, Sheik Saeed al-Masrikilled;
1

Operatives of AQAP in Yemen, including Ammar al-Wa‟ili and Ali Saleh Farhan killed;
Harun Fazul, the leader of AQ in East Africa and the mastermind of the „98 bombings of
our embassies in Africa killed by Somali security forces.
All told, over the past two and half years, virtually every major al-Qaeda affiliate has lost a key
leader or operational commander, and more key al-Qaeda leaders have been eliminated in rapid
succession than any time since 9/11.
Other post-9/11 reforms include a new counterterrorism focus at the FBI, where the number of
Joint Terrorism Task Forces - we call them JTTFs - has grown from 35 to 104 around the
country and the number of JTTF personnel has increased from approximately 1,000 before 9/11
to nearly 4,500 today.
The Department of Homeland Security was established after 9/11 and it has developed its own
intelligence component. There are now 72 fusion centers around the country to serve as the focal
points for the receipt, analysis, and sharing of threat-related information with state and local
authorities.
Here in the Congress, both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are working together
and are now completing work on our 3rd authorization bill in a row after a 6 year hiatus during
which no intelligence authorization bills were enacted. Vice-Chairman Chambliss and I work
closely together, as do our staffs. I trust him, he‟s straightforward, we discuss virtually
everything, and I know the same goes for the HPSCI. And that‟s the way I believe it should be.
Unfortunately, as our Intelligence Community has made improvements, the terrorist threat has
also changed. Instead of fighting one enemy, al Qaeda has dispersed and its affiliates have
emerged in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa.
There is a metastasizing set of groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan intent on terror attacks and
violence against United States forces, including the Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
These groups have also adapted as we have improved. They have learned ways to evade
surveillance and they have developed ways to attack that are difficult to defend against. This
includes small-arms “commando-style” raids like in Mumbai and explosives using PETN that
can be concealed within a body or in a package that are difficult to detect.
We know terrorist groups are interested in attacks using weapons of mass destruction, which we
cannot allow to happen.
So we must continue to improve, and adapt, and do so at the same speed as small, nimble
terrorist cells.
We welcome today the first public appearance of the new CIA Director, retired general David
Petraeus - who is one of America‟s very best. I read his biography last night and I didn‟t know

2

anyone really could accomplish as much as he has. He‟s noted for this outstanding service and
most recently his service in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at Central Command overseeing both wars.
I would expect that Director Petraeus will, in the coming weeks, be reviewing the CIA‟s mission
in collaboration with DNI Clapper. And it is very encouraging that the two of you are
approaching this relationship as positively and productively as you are. I would hope that your
review would include the following:
Continuing to increase HUMINT collection on hard targets and continue improvements
that we have made to analysis;
Decreasing the number of contractors
Continuing to improve language ability in those key areas – including Dari, Urdu, Pashto,
Arabic, and Farsi – needed to understand what is going on in key parts of the world
today.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the IC hired thousands of contractors as a matter
of convenience, and for their expertise. Contractors were tasked to conduct intelligence
operations, collection, exploitation, and analysis and all are critical tasks for the Intelligence
Community and include – I would argue – inherently governmental functions that should be
done by government employees at one-third less cost per employee.
The Office of the DNI recently reported that for Fiscal Year 2010 “core contractors” accounted
for 23% of the total IC Human Capital Workforce, down only one percent from the year before.
The overall number of contractors is in the tens of thousands; the numbers across intelligence,
defense, and homeland security is in the hundreds of thousands.
We had an agreement in 2009 to reduce IC contractor numbers by 5 percent a year, but it is clear
that progress has not been maintained and sufficient cuts are not being made.
We have seen moderate progress in improving overall language capability in the past two years,
but of the several thousand military and IC positions that require foreign language skill only
about half of the IC‟s self-assessed requirements are being met by an individual with sufficient
language proficiency. We must do better.
Through both of our Committees‟ oversight work, we review sensitive programs across the IC to
make sure we understand what is going on, that operations are carefully carried out and are legal
and effective.
I‟m pleased to say that in almost all cases, we are fully satisfied.
Of note, for the past two years, the Intelligence Committee has conducted extensive oversight of
certain critical aspects of the country‟s counterterrorism efforts, especially along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border. These efforts are notable for their precision, their effectiveness,
and the care taken to ensure that non-combatant casualties are kept to an absolute minimum.

3

In sum, there are a number of areas where we have made progress since 9/11 to make the nation
safer, but there are also issues that we need to continue to work on and hopefully we can do that
cooperatively with the Intelligence Community and the entire Executive Branch.
So gentlemen, Director Clapper, Director Petraeus, my own view is a great deal of substantial,
positive progress has been made, and I thank you and all who work for your communities for
that.
I look forward to your testimony, and now let me turn to Ranking Member Ruppersberger for his
comments.

4