Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair says during an Annual Threat Assessment hearing on Wednesday that it’s harder to detect smaller terrorist groups. (:25)
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair lists terrorists that are believed to be affiliated with Al-Qaida during an Annual Threat Assessment hearing on Wednesday. (:47)
By ChingYu Wang – Talk Radio News Service
When asked during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday whether or not the U.S. can adequately prevent future terrorist attacks, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said “as a result [of] the recent rash of the attacks last year both successful and unsuccessful, identifying individual terrorists, smaller groups, short histories, using simple attack methods is a much more difficult task.”
Blair identified the current violent extremism facing the U.S. as a tough situation and said the intelligence community is “working hard to improve.”
“The violent extremism threat is evolving,” Blair added.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) questioned Blair on whether the U.S. has adequate resources in place to prevent future terror attacks from happening. Replied Blair, “however much we improve, we cannot count on intelligence to catch and identify every threat.”
Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) asked Blair to address issue of the intelligence community leaking information to the media prior to informing Congress.
“We are emphasizing administrative measures, which we can take with any agency, to investigate quickly, to check the various ways of keeping in track of what our people are doing,” said Blair.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) , the committee’s Ranking Member, told Blair that the intelligence community’s biggest concern should be the growing trend of enemy groups recruiting Americans to fight against their country. “There’s nothing more dangerous to this country than Americans who have joined the enemy,” said Hoekstra.
Blair responded by saying, “We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community. If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”
During the Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency General Hayden says that information gathering techniques used by the CIA are lawful, appropriate, and adequate to the needs of the CIA program. He then says that their manual is different than the Army Field Manual. He then uses as an example the information gathered from Saddam Hussein using the CIA’s techniques. Vice Chairman Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) interrupts by saying that the information was obtained right before he [Hussein] was about to be hanged. “Talk about an enhanced interrogation technique,” Bond says. (:55)
During the Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) asks both Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency General Michael Hayden what defines torture, and says that pain is pain “it doesn’t depend on the circumstances.” McConnell says he was talking about “excruciating pain.” General Hayden said that the requirement for something to be defined as torture depends on the adjectives that are in front of the word “pain,” and that it also depends on level, duration, and lasting effects of the pain. (1:03)
During the Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency General Michael Hayden says that both government and independent contractors are used to get information, and that they are a governmental activity under governmental control. “We are not outsourcing this.” (:25)
