Committee on International Relations
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515-0128

Testimony by
Acting Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research
Carol A. Rodley
Before the House International Relations Committee
"9/11 Commission Report Recommendations"
Washington, DC
August 19, 2004

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee:

I’d like to thank the Committee for organizing this hearing and for inviting me to participate in the discussion. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research is a unique organization in that we are part of both the intelligence community and the State Department. We have been directly involved in the ongoing effort to implement the reforms of the intelligence community recommended by the 9/1l Commission, and we are equally interested in those recommendations that affect the State Department.

INR supports the Secretary of State and his diplomatic mission; the State Department colleagues here with me today are some of our customers. Because Secretary Powell’s mission is a global one, INR covers all countries all the time. How do we do that? We’re a very small organization - with about 160 analysts- but we have depth and expertise with our unique mix of Foreign Service and Civil Service. Our analysts have, on average, more time on account than those of any other agency in the intelligence community. But we also have the flexibility to reach out to other intelligence community agencies, to academics, to think tanks -- we can tap expertise wherever it is found. Another part of what makes us effective is the daily interaction we have with our policy customers. Our analysts interact with, brief, talk to and collaborate with their counterparts on the policy side, from Secretary Powell on down to the desk officer level day in and day out. We understand what they care about, what they’re worried about, what they know already and what they need to know.

Terrorism is a global problem and we are global in our coverage. Since September 11, 2001, we’ve added coverage of terrorism as an additional job element for all of our regional analysts. Terrorism does not occur in a vacuum. Our regional analysts are charged with providing insight about the political, economic, and cultural contexts in which terrorist networks operate, in which terrorist attacks occur and in which successful counterterrorism efforts come to fruition. Our economic analysts provide support to Assistant Secretary Wayne in his efforts to track and freeze terrorist assets. We’ve put together a "Team Al-Qaida" which brings together analysts from regional offices, economists, and terrorism specialists to deepen our understanding of both specific terrorist networks and the broader international jihadist movement. Our terrorism analysts, working closely with members of other intelligence agencies, including TTIC, have developed computer-aided methods to mine the volumes of data and have developed particular expertise on terrorist support networks and terrorist facilitators.

The 9/11 Commission Report recommends a different status for departmental intelligence units such as INR and Department of Energy, although the details about how we will relate to the rest of the community have not been addressed. We need to continue to have a voice in intelligence requirements, tasking, collection and community analysis. As the discussions underway begin to flesh out the recommendations of the commission we hope that the result will be an enhanced capability for the national intelligence agencies on which we rely very heavily. Four main concerns that we have raised during these discussions are:

While INR will remain heavily dependent on the rest of the intelligence community, it also must preserve its unique role in support of the Secretary of State. Some of the proposed reforms will affect us directly, others little, if at all. We strongly support reform initiatives to expand interaction between intelligence analysts, operators, and collectors. We believe that better, faster, easier communication among agencies will improve our effectiveness in serving state and local officials and in working with our foreign allies in the global war on terrorism.