9/11 Commission Testimony of Thomas Pickard and J. Cofer Black

ROEMER: So you had a May 10th memo on the attorney general's priorities that you objected to.

PICKARD: I received that on September 12th, that denial.

ROEMER: So what does this say about counterterrorism as a priority for the attorney general? Do you think it was not the priority that you hoped it would be, commensurate with the FBI's?

PICKARD: I only had the perspective to see it from my view of the FBI. I don't know all that the attorney general had to look at with the hundred thousand employees of the Department of Justice.

ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

KEAN: Just got a couple of questions.

During the summer of 2001, the Minneapolis office had Moussaoui detained and they were concerned that he might be part of a larger plot. Were you aware of his detention and aware of his...

PICKARD: No, I was not.

KEAN: Were you aware of those concerns any time before September 11th?

PICKARD: No, I was not.

KEAN: The New York office began searching for al Hazmi and al Mihdhar -- knew that they were in the country and were searching for them that same summer.

PICKARD: Right.

KEAN: Were you aware of that?

PICKARD: No, I was not before September 11th.

KEAN: Do you think if those two matters from those different offices had been brought to your attention, do you think you might have thought a little differently about the plot, or whether there was a plot, or you might have acted differently based on those pieces of information?

PICKARD: I've thought long and hard about that, Governor, and it's a frightening thought to think that that could have been on my desk on September 10th and would I have done something differently or not. And I can't answer that.

I go back and forth on that constantly. It keeps me up at night, thinking, If I had that information, would I have had the intuitiveness to recognize, to go to the president, to do something different.

KEAN: What bothers me is just the fact it didn't get to you. You know, that something in the FBI stopped those very two important pieces of information from different parts of the country from rising to the kind of level where you might have seen them and might have acted on them.

I spoke recently with the individual who is in charge of the Minneapolis office. I asked him, I said, Why didn't you call me? I said, You know me, I send once a year out an e-mail out to all FBI employees, to tell them to come to me with any issue you have, whether it's investigative, administrative, your pay, or some other problem.

And I'd heard frequently from individuals who said, I can't get a group one (ph) undercover operation through, or I'm not getting my annual leave corrected, or whatever it might be. And my secretary used to kid me about it because she'd print it out each night and say, Here's your homework, do it tonight and bring it back tomorrow morning, because I don't type.

Those things bothered me, but those employees working down in the Counterterrorism Division were working very hard. They were trying to do the best they could with the hundreds of pieces of information they could. And as we sit here with 20/20 hindsight, picking out three or four pieces of information, I think it's a disservice to them to recognize what pieces, in light of 9/11, were relevant.

Hindsight is a word -- we've all got to be careful to look at the world as it was before 9/11.

Ambassador Black, using hindsight now, if we were able to recognize the kind of tragedy that was going to happen, what would you have done differently? What did we do wrong?

BLACK: Well, I tell you, I would start from the standpoint that when I started this job in 1999, I thought there was a good chance I was going to be sitting right here in front of you. And I was mentally prepared for it all along.

The enemy we're up against is one that I've been operating against since the early '90s. I know these guys. I know what they want to do. I know how dedicated they are. And they were coming at us hard.

And, you know, we did all that we could at our level to engage these guys to try and produce the kinds of intelligence, produce the kinds of leads. And the men and women that did this, Governor, that serve this country in war, out front, did a fantastic job.

The big bottom line here, you know, people come up with these grand ideas for improvement, you know, big computers, whatever. The bottom line here, I've got to tell you -- and I'll take part of the blame on this, I kind of failed my people, despite doing everything I could. We didn't have enough people to do the job. And we didn't have enough money by magnitudes. And that could give you comparisons you like wouldn't believe. We used to talk about it at the Counterterrorism Center.

You know, this goes in the '90s. I mean, this has been so hard- wired. You know, by the time we get up to the recent past, and this train is on this track and this is where it's going. Hell, I don't even know if we ever could have got it off without some kind of catastrophe. I will tell you, you know, going back to the '90s, doing the terrorist target, the only way we ever got more money essentially, was we would spent ahead of the curve and run out.

And people talk about the millennium threat. I can remember, we were spending money on the millennium threat, went to the director. I said, Mr. Tenet, we're spending money here. We are not going to make it to the end of the fiscal year. We're going to be three months short. We're going to have to stop. And, you know, we won't be able to operate. He signaled me aside, and he said, Well, you know, do what's right for the country, blow it out. So we did.

We spent, you know, after the millennium threat was over, we spent our time trying to get the money to make up for that which we spent, or -- and I'm just not going to go into that kind of language I use, which is very graphic -- but, unfortunately, when Americans get killed it would translate into additional resources.

But what I want to leave you with, I mean, that's all I want to leave you with: The people that did this are heroes and we didn't give them what they needed to fight and win. It's that simple. Thank you.

KEAN: Senator Gorton?

GORTON: Mr. Pickard, you answered some of these questions at the beginning of Commissioner Lehman's testimony, but I want to press you a little bit further on it.

In the now famous presidential daily briefing of August 6th, 2001, after a statement that the CIA had not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, there is that single line: The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the United States that it considers bin Laden-related.

Now, you quite rightly said that wasn't your sentence. You didn't write it. No one from the FBI wrote it. It was written by someone from the CIA after a conversation, a telephone conversation...

PICKARD: That's correct.

GORTON: ... with someone at the FBI.

Now, our staff says this about that statement. The 70 full field investigations number was checked out by the joint inquiry and we looked at it, too. It was indeed a number the bureau used at the time. It was generously calculated to include all fund-raising investigations around the country that might have a connection with OBL.

Now, was not Commissioner Lehman correct in saying, the normal recipient of a statement like would generally -- could easily take the interpretation, We've got it covered ; that that's what that meant? That's one question.

The second question is, is this staff interpretation or investigation of what was meant by 70 full field investigations correct, as far as you're concerned?

And my third question would be, had you been writing it up, would you have been more modest and more limited than what you claimed for the FBI?

PICKARD: First off, to your issue of Do we got it covered? we could never say that.

GORTON: Well, I asked whether or not the recipient might well interpret the sentence that way?

PICKARD: I would never -- especially with the experience I've had in counterintelligence and counterterrorism, you could never say you have it covered. You don't know what you don't know is the problem. You can only tell based upon the intelligence you have, you have an understanding of where they're coming from and things like that.

But I don't think anybody can say -- it's only as good as the intelligence you have. Just like 9/11. It was only as good as the intelligence we had, and we didn't have much.

I'm sorry.

GORTON: Second question is whether or not our staff characterization is correct.

PICKARD: I only learned about this when the PDB was released within the last couple of days. And when I was at FBI headquarters yesterday, I asked could they explain to me the 70 cases, which I had no recollection of ever hearing about as an aggregated number. And they gave me a rundown on the 70 approximately cases, and I have that that I could provide to your staff afterwards.

(LAUGHTER)

... 12 of the investigations were closed because the individuals did not have any connections with terrorism as we had initially suspected. That just gives you some kind of context.

GORTON: OK. That's 12 out of 70. Were a number of them simply fund-raising investigations?

KEAN: That's the last question, Senator.

PICKARD: I'm sorry, but I do not know that and the material they gave me yesterday does not expound on that. I'll be happy to ask Director Mueller.

GORTON: Would you have characterized it a little bit differently if you had been reporting directly to the White House as a part of that PDB?

PICKARD: I would not want anyone to think the statement that, We've got it covered, or anything like that. We only know what we know. We don't know what al Qaeda is.

And the lack of penetration of al Qaeda -- as I said in my opening statement, we did not have great sources in al Qaeda. And that's evidenced by 9/11. We did not, as George Tenet said, steal the secret.

GORTON: Thank you.

KEAN: Governor Thompson?

THOMPSON: Mr. Pickard, since its declassification last weekend you've, I assume, read the PDB of August 6th.

PICKARD: Yes, I have.

THOMPSON: On the first page it says, al Qaeda members, including some who are U.S. citizens, have resided in or travelled to the U.S. for years and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. But in fact, as we now know, the al Qaeda members who participated in September 11th didn't use any such support structure, is that correct?

BLACK: Excuse me. I mean, I have to take this for the record. I just don't -- I just do not remember. What I do remember about this is the effort to collect intelligence that it produced the analysis that al Qaeda operatives were involved in this.

But the outstanding question, I recall, was that of command and control, which was resolved a substantial period later where we were able to prove even in the intelligence case, there was a direct link between Osama bin Laden and the Cole attack.

THOMPSON: Once it was proved, was there any discussion in the Bush administration about retaliating against al Qaeda or the Taliban for their attack on the Cole?

BLACK: I would not know if there was. I was not privy to that kind of discussion.

THOMPSON: You never heard that?

BLACK: I never heard that, sir.

THOMPSON: Mr. Pickard, did you ever hear that?

PICKARD: I never heard that, either.

THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KEAN: Senator Kerrey?

KERREY: Ambassador Black, are you familiar with a 1998 effort to change the overt policy of the United States toward Iraq -- at all?

I mean...

BLACK: No, sir, I'm...

KERREY: ... the details of the Iraq Liberation Act.

BLACK: No, I only do terrorism. That's more than enough for me. Iraq is -- the way we're organized -- is something different.

KERREY: Well, the reason I say it, it's on my list of regrets. I mean -- not that I did that. I led the effort. President Clinton signed the legislation on Halloween, 1998.

And, basically, what it did was it said our overt policy has to be the same as our covert policy. And one of the things that -- the reason I say that is I sort of regret, is that I didn't do the same with terrorism, because it seems to me that when you say, We were doing all we could, that we were at a state of war at the CTC, that the problem was, on the overt side, we weren't.

Would, for example, the Phoenix memo, had a different impact?

BLACK: Well...

KERREY: If the policy-makers -- again, pick your poison, either President Clinton or President Bush -- had said in the overt space, We're at war with al Qaeda. I may not need a congressional declaration of war, that's too unpopular. But at the very least I'm going to say al Qaeda soldiers can't come into the United States of America ?

BLACK: Well, I think, Senator, say from the early '90s, if we had engaged this with a warrior ethos, we would not be in this situation today.

KERREY: Let me ask you one last question: How in God's name did this thing happen?

I've got to tell you, I hear battle stations and everything we're doing, and at our airports we were at ease. We were stacked arms. We were not prepared for a hijacking. And you may say, Well, we didn't know all the conspiracy -- a hijacking surprised us. That's what Betty Ong said, when we heard her voice, that the government and the FAA -- none of us were prepared for even a simple hijacking.

How in God's name did that happen?

BLACK: Am I meant to answer that, sir?

KERREY: Yes. If you can. If can't fine. I mean, I'm not sure I could.

BLACK: (inaudible) is that I don't know, but what I will say is that, from my perspective, that's why we tend to be a group of pretty paranoid people who don't get to sleep much.

(LAUGHTER)

When you know, basically, that if they get by you, then it's going to be a challenge for this country to respond.

KERREY: I quoted you earlier, Mr. Ambassador, saying that -- I loved what you said. Here's what we did, here's what we tried and here's what we have failed to get done. And I put myself in that camp.

BLACK: We could use some help. We could have used some help, Senator.

KERREY: Thank you.

KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick?

GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I don't want either of you to think that my questions are in any way trying to blame people who tried really hard, and who quite evidently feel very bad about the things that didn't get done or things that weren't executed perfectly. But it's our job to understand the efficacy of the things our government tried to do to protect the American people.

Let me start, Mr. Black, with one follow-up question to you. Our staff statement talks about the CIA's zone defense as opposed to man- to-man to use the current basketball analogy.

After al Hazmi and al Mihdhar were followed by you out of the Kuala Lumpur meeting and you lost them in Bangkok, it's our understanding that you knew that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa.

And so, my question is: Why, at that point, was he not put on the TIPOFF watch list?

BLACK: Well, I would say that that particular case -- he should have been. Should have been and, unfortunately, ma'am, very often you'll find my answer is going back to primarily influence by not enough people and not enough resources.

In fact, I would say that there were multiple opportunities where we could have watch listed.

GORELICK: Yes, I just gave you one.

BLACK: There was one. But, I mean, it goes back to in the UAE, when we first came up with copies of the passport and the picture.

And I would just like to say that having spoken to some of the people involved with this, you know, they truly believe that this information was passed to the FBI way back in January of '01. And, you know, they thought they had done it, and they acted as if they did.