—SECRET-- HPK fi 040- Event: LTG Pat Hughes, USA (ret.) • Type of Event: Interview

Date: October 20, 2003

Special Access Issues: None

Prepared by: Gordon Lederman

Team Number: 2

Location: Commission's K St. Office

Participants — non-Commission: LTG Patrick Hughes, USA (ret.)

Participants — Commission: Christine Healey, Gordon Lederman

(U) BACKGROUND

(U) LTG Hughes recounted the highlights of his career, focusing particularly on the 1990s. He served as director of the Army's Intelligence Support Command. He also served as J-2 of U.S. Central Command. From 1994-6, he was J-2 for the Joint Staff From 1996 to October 1999, he was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He currently is a private consultant and does work for the U.S. Government.

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He has recently been asked to return to government service.

(U) COUNTERTERRORISM

(U) He was impressed by CTC and thought it could respond quickly to changing events within the operations cycle of the terrorists. The same could not be said for CTC before 9/11. CTC's amalgamation of skills and capabilities is critical for counterterrorism, although it has taken time to . mature. CTC's integration of operators and analysts is critical because operators themselves know a lot about the targets. CTC is basically the CIA's CTC, not the DCI's CTC.

(S1 After 9/11,1 'transferred to CTC. However, the transition did not work very well. People cannot just be reassigned to new problems. The IC did not have enough people to cover everything; the IC had lost 30% of its people during the 1990s, and we ,are now paying the price for it. The IC is being asked to describe the global condition, which it never had to do. The IC has to say not when the sparrow will fly but • predict its flight before it flies. The IC tends to form fire brigades for problems. For Gulf

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War II, the IC formed a fire brigade which was disbanded after major combat operations ended, but now the war has continued. And there is pressure on the IC to meet global requirements while it is manned for regional requirements.

• (S) With respect to criticism that CTC is too operationally-focused, he responded that terrorist groups such as al Qa.'ida are "too amorphous" and therefore the key is to identify individuals and to stop them. Terrorist organizations may not even realize that they are terrorist organizations — some members may not realize it, and field operatives may have no sense of the full extent of operations because of rigid compartmentalization. Only certain cells of terrorist organizations might be activated at any one time. Accordingly, going after individuals is easier than going after organizations. However, if you only target individuals, you will always miss something because there are always more bad guys; there needs to be more long-term, strategic analysis. Indeed, our use of force hardens the resolve of some bad guys. While the use of force is necessary, we need stronger, more positive approaches to appeal to the noble side of humanity — and there is no one in the IC thinking about this issue.

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J(S) He characterized successful terrorist operations as dependent upon the maintenance of secrecy, and our task is to penetrate that secrecy. Afghanistan was identified as a terrorist sanctuary, but no where else. We need to work very hard against terrorist support: terrorist financing, madrasas (religious schools), family connections, and materiel (he hp, t ic veq that terrorists have nreeNistinv stocks of weapons). L

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(U) We have been hit with terrorist attacks for decades, and the IC should have been focused on preventing terrorists from coming to the U.S. It is very easy to enter the U.S.; narcotics are smuggled in all the time. The IC was talking about a domestic attack, but the U.S. never acted to secure its borders and to integrate information. The notion of aircraft as weapons was considered before 9/11; he recalls thinking of it when he took flights around Washington, DC. And an Oklahoma City bombing could happen again today.

(U) Warning was not done well pre-9/11 and is not done well today. The Chicken Little phenomenon leads to a lack of consequences from warning. Red teams need to be used to dream-up capabilities that terrorists could use.

(5) With respect to information-sharing, the FBI did not inform the IC that there were terrorists domestically' 9/11 Classified Information Ithe CIA did not share information, and the DIA did not share information. "We never should have allowed what used to be — damn us." We should have realized — we should have known — that terrorists could strike domestically.

(U) 9/11 was an intelligence failure — it cannot be viewed any other way. We did not do what was adequate to blunt the threat. Customs and INS did a poor job. We merely

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talked about improving port security - the problem of container security was discussed pre-9/11. The reason that things were not done is because it would have cost large amounts of money, which requires a particular mindset in order to spend on homeland security.

(U) Concerning law and privacy, we are in a "netherworld" between what the U.S. had pre-9/11 and what we should have.

(U) There is no overall counterterrorism strategy for the IC. Parts of the IC have a strategy for counterterrorism which they interpret for their own benefit.

(U) MANAGEMENT OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY (IC)

(U) He dislikes the term "Intelligence Community." The DCI and the Secretary of Defense (SecDef) are "only occasionally on the same plain." The SecDef is "the 800 lbs gorilla." The DCI has the "potential" to be a "750 lbs. gorilla" depending upon his/her relationship with the President. The DCI's colleagues in the Executive Branch pay attention to the DCI as the President's principal intelligence adviser. The DCI actually has more power than DCI Tenet and previous DCIs have given themselves credit for. If the DCI assembled the program managers (directors of the National Security Agency [NSA], the National Imagery and Mapping Agency [NIMA], etc.), the program managers would fall the DCI's direction.

(U) LTG Hughes took over as head of DIA from General Minihan in 1996. DCI Tenet presided over the change-in-command ceremony. When LTG Hughes relinquished command, both DCI Tenet and the Deputy Secretary of Defense presided over the change-in-command ceremony. As DIA Director, LTG Hughes viewed both DCI Tenet and the SecDef as his bosses.

(U) The DCI can move funds, but not unilaterally - others must cooperate. He said . that the DCI's biggest problem was ordering policy changes that need to be done when the major departments (for example, Justice, Defense, Homeland Security) are involved. The DCI may issue DCIDs, but they are "conditionally followed and parochially read and interpreted." The DCI has directed interoperability, common security standards, and the effective exchange of information without parochial resistance and deliberate denial. DCI Tenet has been on the record saying that there is no reason to withhold 99% of information. However, the DCI has no "hammer" to enforce decisions. The DCI cannot fire people. The DCI could call the SecDef to complain about a particular program manager, but the SecDef might not fire that individual. The DCI needs to have operational authority over the IC - the minute that the DCI is outside of the CIA, his/her power is diminished.

(U) The DC1 has more power than we give him credit for having. The reality is that the DCl/SecDef division of power has not worked. The IC is "chronically tentative" - there is no assurance that the IC will act in a "robust and synergistic" manner. Indeed, people at the working-level of the IC tell LTG Hughes that the exchange of information is still

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conditional and very much plagued ,by parochial interests. While program managers such as the Director of NSA state that the); Support information-sharing, the next-lower level of management does not.

(U) The Community Management Staff (CMS) and DDCl/Community Management Joan Dempsey did a very good job.

(U) The DCI gathers great strength from being CIA Director and speaks to the CIA in gritty terms while speaking to the President and senior leaders in high-brow English. Yet the DCI should be separated from CIA Director — the DCI's span of control is too great. The DCI cannot be an effective DCI and manage the CIA as well. A Director of National Intelligence (DNI) would be the President's senior adviser but would not brief the President every day. The DNI should cover both foreign and domestic activity. Yet creation of a DNI requires specific delineation of authorities and responsibilities and an understanding of roles, missions, and functions.

(U) Now we are in a transition — we know that we have departed from the past in terms of .technology, events, and culture. We have declared war on a bunch of radical Islamists —something never done before. We have declared war on terrorism as a genre. We have changed, but is not clear what plateaus we will reach. Change needs to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. We need a future-oriented effort to imagine what issues we might be involved in in the future. Our approach in the past was to let things happen, to allow them to occur. The President's preemption policy is based on the notion that we cannot absorb another blow in the future. However, the logic of preemption inexorably leads you to be able to anticipate the future and to be able to act. We need to be able to translate analysis into actionable material. Yet the mechanisms to do so do not exist. The trend is toward exceptional government surveillance.

(U) There is no one in charge of open source intelligence (OSINT) or technical intelligence today. Indeed, no one even uses the term "technical intelligence." Meanwhile, CIA and DIA find themselves buying the same piece of equipment. We need to have one person in charge of each discipline. The term "multi-INT" refers to integration of more than one but not all INTs.

\(S.),The Department of Energy (DoE) is a very important part of the IC because of emerging sciences. Yet DoE has a different security apparatus and requires a separate security clearance that is not fungible with the rest of the IC's. There needs to be one agency that administers secrecy. There needs to be a uniform polygraph standard.

(U) TTIC is probably the only thing that could have been done to make the DCI come alive. TTIC is not doing collection management. If nothing else is done, there needs to be a group of "honest" people who will delineate the roles and missions within the IC without changing structure. Form will then follow function. Currently, there is a mélange of roles, missions, and functions that are not necessarily linked. Who has what authorities and responsibility and who performance what roles, missions, and functions? An issue to explore is who had the authority to produce what products. There are a

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number of redundant products. And who has responsibility for combating terrorism domestically? No one has that authority. What is the role of the Dept. of Homeland Security's Intelligence Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate (IAIP)? TTIC's,relationship to IAIP is the "crux" of the issue. It was a "brilliant" move by DCI Tenet to'put the TTIC in CIA because it could never have lived otherwise. However, TTIC's position should be reviewed as to whether TTIC should be placed in IAIP (even though placing1TIC in IAIP is not the right thing to do right now). His schematic regarding roles and missions is as follows: (1) TTIC characterizes the threat; and (2) IAIP conveys the threat to'the U.S. heartland. The Dept. of Homeland Security has a lot of. collection capability — 1'70,000 people across the U.S.; it is unconscionable not to have a collection system for that information. CTC sees TTIC as a threat to its resources, as TTIC is constructed out of a preexisting resource base, but it is wrong not to add resources. LTG Hughes favoring 'creating TTIC out of "whole cloth."

Everything is personality-dependent.'High-level leaders are all opinionated. For example, John Brennan is a strong personality, ngth is viewed as abrasive by some — the same is true for Jose Rodriguez and Tension just naturally results between leaders — yet personality conflict leads to some creativity. Some lack of cooperation between leaders is bad, but some is professional.

(U) The IC has been a learning organization at times but also is a student suffering from ADD. Its proclivity is ADD. It has a communal proclivity to function under fire, to rush to fires without wondering why the fires exist ab initio. Root causes are not solved — the motivating conditions and underlying reasons for the fires are not addressed.

(U) More generally, a revolution in intelligence affairs is needed; the old categories such as "Foreign Intelligence" are insufficient for today's world. We need to examine the intersection of foreign intelligence, domestic intelligence, and private-sector information — we need to deputize people to see information in this nexus under a legal authority different than was the case in the past. This intelligence is different because of the implications for civil rights, national security, and private-sector information.

(U) To combat terrorist finance, we will need to penetrate deep within corporate entities. Finding terrorist activity within corporations will raise civil rights issues, generate risk for the government, and also requires corporations to trust government enough to partner with government. Also, we need a place to which people can report terrorism-related information.

(U) The first clue that something was amiss pre-9/I 1 was that there were flight students who did not want to learn how to land.

(U) ON COLLECTION

,fil<The FBI lacks a collection management system for information collected outside of the FBI. We need a cadre of people who know sources and methods in order to manage collection — there needs to be someone in charge of collection capabilities. For example:

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to go against a target domestically, if the FBI needs a CIA capability, a centralized collection mannoer should know it and he ble to task it — we lack this broad capability.

9/11 Classified Information The National Intelligence Collection Board and the SIGINT Committee are not effective in taking a collection requirements and translating it into a collection task.

(.S) Charlie Allen, the Assistant DCI for Collection, is an "icon." We should speak with DIA's Defense Collection Coordination Center, which manages collection by DoD intelligence agencies and from which 80% of the IC's capabilities are controlled. A "high-level" ADCl/C is needed, one who has sufficient authority. In essence, collection has not jelled as it should.

(U) ON HUMINT

We have a great technical capability for remote access, but we "dismantled" HUMINT — which was "a huge strategic mistake." Our HUMINT capability — the CIA, the FBI, and the Defense HUMINT Service — may not have been performed so well, but the drawdown in those capabilities in the 1990s came at exactly the wrong time for the U.S. When we needed close access (HUMINT) for transnational threats, we did not have it. In sum, there was no strategy for the IC's downsizing in the 1990s. Moreover, some national leaders have found HUMINT distasteful. Admiral Turner dismantled HUMINT; during his field experience, LTG Hughes witnessed the decline of the U.S. HUMINT. He noted that the Directorate of Operations does not just do collection but also is CIA's "operational arm" by doing special activities.

(U) ON SECURITY

(8) With respect to originator control (ORCON), the information can be shared only one echelon from the originator and cannot go further without the originator's permission. ORCON can be administered broadly or narrowly. If narrowly, it creates misperception and distrust in the military context. The military relies on a rigid chain of command, meaning that the superior must know what the subordinate know; ORCON creates the situation that the subordinate knows more than the superior — or vice versa, which can be equally as problematic. Discrepancies between superiors' and subordinates' knowledge would not work well in the business contact, where money is at stake. Individuals may be asked to leave briefings for a few moments because they lack certain compartments —they then get upset and never return.

(8)The TS/SCl/TK/G/SI is clearance concept that is fifty years old, when intelligence compartmentalization was coterminous with intelligence disciplines. There is no central management of compartmentalization — the DCI should be measuring and controlling it. There is no mechanism to decide who needs to know what.

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OS) First, is the resource base adequate for counterterrorism and homeland security? LTG 'Hughes believes it is not. For example, the military and the IC cannot just focus on the Global War on Terrorism because there are other challenges that they must meet simultaneously. Second, what should happen to TTIC; its move! iis inevitable. Third, how to rebuild HUMINT and counterintelligence. Fourth, there no engine for change — there is no "strategic skeleton on which to put muscle" — theie are no neurological connections and sinews for coordination.

Fifth, what is the balance between protecting the homeland and protecting, U.S. interests abroad? We need allies to protect U.S. infrastructure abroad. He gaVe the example of the fact that 11% of U.S. oil comes from Nigerii

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fU) ON ANALYSIS

• (S)/We badly need analysts who are divorced from the overwhelming force of the day-to- day activity. Why has this not happened? There is an absence of long-term insightful analysis of the macro-level problems. Indeed, the nature of our society is to be fixated on the problems of today. No one is doing high-level analysis on terrorism. CTC has it in its mandate, and CTC talks a good game, but CTC's Office of Terrorism Assessment (OTA) is not doing much. He is torn on whether OTA should be moved to TTIC, as OTA does do current reporting.

(U) ON WARNING

(21 Warning is not done well. One reason is the problem of being a Chicken Little. The other is the fear of causing anxiety or pre-event panic.

(U) QUESTIONS FOR THE 9/11 COMMISSION

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