Homeland Security

As delivered

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Pelosi and members of the Committee. It's a great pleasure for me to be here morning with my colleagues. I would like to ask the Committee's indulgence for a moment to introduce two guests that I have brought with me. As I think most of the Committee members will remember from my previous incarnation, I was Chairman of America's Promise, the Alliance for Youth. And one of the programs that came out of that was an exchange program between the United States Department of State and the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

So today, two young Americans are in the United Kingdom traveling around with the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Mr. Jack Straw. He has taken them to Bratislava in Europe to attend meetings with him. And in exchange, I have two young British -- a young lady and a young gentleman who are from Surry, England. I would like to ask them to stand up and be recognized. This is Mei Lai Lu and Mr. Tom Minor.  (Applause.)

SECRETARY POWELL: I couldn't bring them or take them to Bratislava or anything approaching that, so I brought them here, Mr. Chairman. They were at a Britney Spears concert last night, they have been to a basketball game, and this is their day with the State Department to see what a Secretary of State does, and I think they're having a pretty good time here in the United States.

CHAIRMAN ARMEY: If I might just say, Mr. Secretary, we look forward to showing you that there can be something better than Britney Spears.  (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, it is a great pleasure to testify before you on this very important subject, and I congratulate you on this new Committee and the work that you will be doing. It is vital work with respect to the security of our nation, and I am pleased to appear with my colleagues to indicate my total support and the total support of the Department to the new Homeland Security Department and to President Bush's proposal. We are prepared to cooperate fully with the new Department; in fact, we are eager to do so.

As President Bush said in announcing the creation of this new Department, we are a different nation today. The tragic events of September 11th and all those events that have conveyed to us have made us a new nation and has made us a -- given us a new situation that we really have to deal with. And I think, Mr. Chairman, you and Mrs. Pelosi have spoken to this already.

Because the fight against international terrorism is different from any other war we've fought in our history, different than any other war that I tried to prepare myself for as a soldier or that I've fought in as a soldier over the last 40 years. It is a war that will not be won principally through military might. It will be won through all of the elements of our national power that Don Rumsfeld spoke to a moment ago -- military might, diplomatic prowess, political efforts, our intelligence effort, going after financial institutions.

And as the President has said so often, we are in this fight to win, and we will not weaken, we will not lose our resolve, we will not run out of patience. We will stick with it until those enemies who come at us in this new and different and asymmetrical way are defeated. We will fight terrorist networks and all those who support these efforts to spread fear and mayhem around the world, and we will use every instrument of our national power and we will not be cowed. We will not be made fearful.

As Mrs. Pelosi said, we all gathered last July 4th, notwithstanding all of the threats that were out there and the suggestions that something terrible would happen, we all came out of our homes and went to our public places to show that we are not a fearful nation. We are a nation with a spine of steel and a heart that is full of courage, and we will not be made fearful by terrorists.

Progress in this campaign against terrorism will come through the patient accumulation of successes -- some seen, some unseen -- and we will remain forever vigilant against new terrorist threats. Our goal will be reached when Americans and our friends around the world can lead their lives free of fear from terrorist attacks. We can not, we will not, let the need to fight this war make us that different a society. We have to protect ourselves. But we must not put up tall fences, sprinkle broken glass on the tops, put a guard at the gate and seal ourselves off from the rest of the world. We must not become gated America or they will have won. We can't let that happen.

So it will require sacrifice, dedication, energy and a great deal of wisdom to maintain this precious balance between our way of life -- our openness, that which makes us America to the rest of the world, our freedom -- and the security measures needed to protect our citizens to the maximum extent possible. We must fight the terrorists, we must protect the lives of our citizens, and we must not relinquish the very values that make us who we are that have made us the greatest nation on earth.

In this regard, President Bush's proposal for a Department of Homeland Security shows the way ahead, as America does everything within its power to protect its citizens at home and abroad. The President has also proposed that this new Department assume responsibility for the policy guidance and the regulation that's required with respect to visa issuance.

As you know, our first line of defense in protecting ourselves from those who would come to our shores are our diplomats at our consulates and other locations around the world, where we issue visas to people to come to America. The United States is ready to make sure that our visa system is a strong one, a secure one, but at the same time, one that encourages people to come to the United States, once we have made sure that they are the right kinds of people to come into our nation, they are not coming in to conduct any kind of activity which would be injurious to any American.

Under the new proposal, the Secretary of Homeland Security will determine what those policies should be. The Secretary of State, the Department of State, is willing, anxious to give all of the authority that we currently have with respect to visa issuance, the regulations, to the Secretary of Homeland Security. That's where it resides. He will have access to all of the intelligence information, law enforcement information, and he will make those policy judgments with respect to who should be authorized to receive a visa at our many visa issuing facilities around the world. We will have some foreign policy input into those judgments, but I yield all of that authority willingly to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

I consider it absolutely essential, however, that the actual issuance of the visas remain with the Department of State. We have the experience, the training, the language skills and the dedicated people to perform this mission. The State Department represents the United States at more than 200 posts around the world, where it carries out its responsibilities for conducting foreign policy, promoting trade, cooperating with foreign law enforcement authorities, and providing consular services to Americans abroad. Our consular officers are also responsible for the issuance of visas to foreign nationals, but they have many other responsibilities. And it is difficult to shred out simply the visa-issuing responsibility from these other consular activities that take place at our various facilities.

Most visa applicants want to come here for legitimate purposes: business, tourism, education. We want them to come to our schools. We want them to come to the United States and visit our wonderful tourist attractions. We want them to participate in health care activities and to come use our hospitals and other facilities.

However, some seek visas for criminal and other awful purposes, including terrorist acts. So we have been working hard to make sure that only those who mean us no ill come to this country. There is no entitlement to a visa. The judgment is that you are not entitled to a visa unless you can establish your coming here for a legitimate purpose.

Since September 11th, we have done a lot to tighten up our system. The most important thing we have done, really, is to increase the size of the database available to our consular officers around the world. We have worked closely with our intelligence agencies and especially with the Justice Department and the FBI to double the size of the database so that when a young consular officer overseas puts a name of an applicant into that database, it comes back here and it gets the widest dissemination so it's bounced against all the databases. We can do an even better job of that, and I'm very pleased at the level of cooperation that has existed between the State Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and all of the other relevant agencies to make sure that we give the broadest screening to this name before that consular officer then makes a judgment as to whether or not an interview is required, or whether or not he should just be shut down out of hand; we don't want this person here.

And so I can assure you we're doing everything possible to tighten our procedures. We put in place a new visa called a Lincoln Visa, which I just have a sample of here, using the latest technology. The finest experts we have in our government have tried to modify this and alter it to see if they could get through this new system, and they have failed. We're doing the same thing with our passports, all using digitized data. This is my passport, and I can assure you I have one of the newest and the best, to make sure that we are protecting ourselves.

Our consular officers do a great job. Do we have problems from time to time? Have our efforts been defeated from time to time? From time to time, do we have someone who does not live up to their responsibilities? Yes, that has occurred. But when we find it, we go after it, as we are doing in the current case at Doha. But do we also have officers who do a brilliant job of spotting someone who is trying to hide, trying to defeat the system? Yes, they do. The gentleman who was arrested recently, Mr. Padilla, was spotted by a consular officer who found something unusual about this particular applicant, reported it to the regional security officer. That person, being vigilant, reported it back here. We then contacted the CIA, the FBI and others and found enough about Mr. Padilla so that when he arrived in the United States, we were waiting for him and he was arrested and taken into custody.

These are dedicated young men and women around the world. They have a career path, they have a career track, they have the language skills. They know all of the other consular activities that take place, that have to take place in our embassies. In 2001 alone, we adjudicated 10 million nonimmigrant visa applications and allowed 7.5 million visas to be issued, allowing these people to come into our country.

So I want to assure the Members of this Committee that we take our responsibilities in the State Department and our consular responsibilities with utmost seriousness, and we are seeing what else we need to do within the Consular Service, within the Consular Affairs Office at the State Department, to make sure that we are doing everything to guard our nation, to guard our people, but at the same time, to make sure we remain a nation of openness, a welcoming nation, that America that we all love and the world respects.

And we look forward to working with the Secretary of Homeland Security and all the elements of the Department of Homeland Security, just as we are now working more closely with all of my colleagues at the table, and the other organizations within the United States Government, to make sure that we are doing these two things: protecting ourselves and remaining an open society. And I look forward to your questions, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.