SENATOR WARNER: I'm holding here a letter from Senator Frist, addressed to me and Senator Stevens, which is self explanatory, asking that we take appropriate action as soon as possible to indicate that the Congress is not going to support this program. It's a very significant mistake. We have scheduled, in the Armed Services Committee, in 15 minutes, a briefing from the head of DARPA.

It is my understanding of how this happened, having discussed it with the head of DARPA this morning, is as follows. The Rand Corporation had a pilot program not in the intelligence area, but the methodology used was helpful. So they then took that concept, went out to the small business community with contracts, which are to be operative this week, using '02 and '03 money, Mr. Chairman, and started this program.

They sent to the Armed Services Committee, as a part of the annual request for the president, a document, which copies of which I should have in my hand, but don't. You could not tell from this document requesting $3 million what this program was about.

And although some inquiries were made, I'll let the chairman of the subcommittee that was dealing with it speak to the issue.

There was no way in the course of your deliberations in subcommittee that you could determine from the face of this document what it involved. So...

SENATOR STEVENS: And I'll clear up one thing for sure. There was never any presentation to the Appropriations Committee for '02 or '03 that such a program would be undertaken. To undertake such a program, they should have come given us either programming request or a specific request for money. They did neither. It is totally unauthorized as far as we're concerned. No funds should have been used for it at all. And it's really a serious mistake on the part of DARPA. I think it may well jeopardize DARPA in the future.

WARNER: Senator Roberts was the subcommittee, was the subcommittee chairman. Why don't you give your perspective.

SENATOR ROBERTS: We actually cut $20 million from this section of the bill. There was never any mention in what's called the Small Business Innovative Research Program, which has been a good program, of this kind of a project, which I consider to be outrageous. So consequently, there was no way for Congress to discover what they're doing with the reprogram funds, as the distinguished chairman has indicated.

This will not be authorized. It will not be appropriated. And we can't use old money for it. And I think the decision by the Pentagon today to simply terminate the program is the most wise one.

I want to say something on behalf of the Intelligence Committee. I'm chairman of the Intelligence Committee. I join with the chairman of the Armed Services Committee in expressing the outrage over the so-called Future Map program, or a terrorism kind of betting pool.

I understand the purpose of the program. I can't disagree more with the approach. The American people expect us to support research and development efforts aimed at protecting them at home and abroad. They also expect us to exercise common sense and prudence, as we evaluate the myriad of technology and development programs intended to detect and prevent any kind of a future attack.

Now, as chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I want to assure the American people and assure you that no such technologies are being developed within the intelligence community, nor will they allow it to be developed.

We will apply the same common sense standard to our intelligence agencies, as Chairman Warner and Chairman Stevens and I are applying to the Defense Department. I think the deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, took the right action today when he announced before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ``The Department has terminated the program. We have shut it down.''

WARNER: This is the one paragraph request that came to the Armed Services Committee in connection with the '04 budget. And if it is necessary, but I doubt that it will be necessary in the conference, we will have stricken this program. I'll hand out copies of this to those who are interested in receiving it.

Take questions.

QUESTION: Senator, Senator Daschle says it's not enough that the Defense Department to simply terminate this program, there should be an apology made that it was pursued, and that whoever initiated this was responsible and should take responsibility. I'm wondering if you agree with that, is this enough? And secondly, what about Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness Program, which apparently was responsible for this? Does this raise questions about...

(CROSSTALK)

WARNER: In speaking with the head of DARPA this morning, about an hour ago, I asked two questions. Did Admiral Poindexter know this program and approve of the solicitation to the small-business community? Answer, yes. Did you, as head of DARPA, know of this request at the time it was submitted to the small-business community? Answer, yes.

Now, as to the disposition of those two gentlemen, that's entirely up to the secretary of defense.

I will say this, that beginning in 1969, 30 years ago, when I went to the Pentagon in the Navy secretariat, DARPA was playing a tremendously important function in our overall defense structure. I think it has continued to do so.

Now, this, in my judgment, is a serious mistake, but I'm not prepared at this time to think it should put the entirety of the close to $3 billion DARPA program in jeopardy, but others may have a different view.

ROBERTS: Well, let me just say this: As a subcommittee chairman, I value very highly the work of DARPA to get the latest technology to the warfighter, and that's what they've done. Basically, what we're going to have to do in the Emerging Threats Subcommittee, and perhaps the full committee, is do a much better job of basic and very aggressive oversight, so something like this can't happen again.

This defies common sense. It's absurd. That if you don't have the specifics of a program in your oversight responsibility in regards to authorization or they don't even go to the appropriators, it seems to me that they are way off base, and somebody should bear that responsibility, and I think we know who that is.

WARNER: Senator Stevens has a comment.

STEVENS: No, I don't have any comment. We have never received a request for this, and we would not approve a request for a program such as this.

WARNER: The question is are we going to hold hearings? Again, we're starting in about 30 minutes with a full briefing with the head of DARPA. And after we receive that in consultation with others, we'll determine what further steps we must take.

QUESTION: You're talking about this program, the people who do these sort of programs say that it has the potential for providing robust and accurate information about potential events. Are you not--you know, it's not a politically palatable deal--but are you losing something by spiking this program? Are you losing some predictive capability?

WARNER: As the program has been presented and more fully developed is a consequence of DARPA reporting through the normal reporting procedure about these contracts. I find it is not one in our overall national defense interest.

Now, whether there's an adaptation of the Rand program that can be made useful, that will have to be answered by DARPA.

QUESTION: Mr. Chairman, do you think they deliberately hid from you their intent...

WARNER: No, I don't think so. No, no.

STEVENS: I think too many people are looking at it wrong. Some have made a mistake and its done. It's over. It's canceled.

WARNER: I mean you cannot tell from this one paragraph any malintent. I mean it's nothing in here to it.

QUESTION: Well what is that [document]?

WARNER: That is a submission by the Department of Defense to the Congress.

STEVENS: They didn't spend that full amount on that program. They initiated a program, someone made a mistake, and it's done. As far as I'm concerned, that's enough. It's done.

QUESTION: On that point, forget whether he should resign, do you think that based on all the questions that have been asked even before this about Admiral Poindexter's program that it should be seriously looked at--not just this specific aspect of that program, but his entire shop?

STEVENS: Well, we do look at the entire program. This was never a mentioned to us. A mistake has been made. But we do look at the program in depth. All three of us look at the program. And I support DARPA totally. It's been a wonderful agency. A good agency.

QUESTION: Do you have questions about Total Information Awareness?

ROBERTS: I think the intent of the program was good. I think basically the means by which it was going to be carried out, I just don't understand it. It doesn't meet the test of common sense and reason, and we will continue to make sure that that doesn't happen again. I think that's very important.

WARNER: You know, these are extremely, difficult times. The nation is at war. DARPA is a vital part of the overall defense picture. This mistake should not, in my judgment, in any way cast doubt on the ability of the department to conduct the war and conduct other affairs.

As Senator Stevens said, this is a $3 million mistake in a program of DARPA, which is over $3 billion in a defense budget which is over $400 billion.

ROBERTS: It also deals with something called predictive analysis. Now, we just got the 9/11 report. All of you have reported on that, on the importance of predictive analysis. This was an attempt. You have people trying to look at open-source material and trying to predict these things, and that's fine. It's just the methods used in this one were very bizarre. And that's about the nicest way I could put it.

Thank you very much.

END

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