Before the Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
November 28, 2001

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I welcome the opportunity to
appear before you today to discuss the Department of Justice’s response to the terrorist attacks of
September 11th.

The country faces a truly extraordinary threat to our national security and the physical
safety of the American people, one that has necessitated an extraordinary redefinition of our
mission. The President and the Attorney General have directed the Justice Department to make
prevention of future terrorist attacks our top and overriding priority. We are pursuing that
priority aggressively and systematically with a national and international investigation of
unprecedented scope, but we are carefully doing so within established constitutional and legal
limits.

Since September 1 lth, hundreds of federal prosecutors from the Department’s Criminal
Division and from U.S. Attorney’s Offices across the country, along with thousands of federal,
state, and local law-enforcement personnel, have been working tirelessly, above and beyond the
call of duty, to carry out the investigation. We should all be grateful for their extraordinary
efforts. At the same time, we owe a debt of gratitude to Congress for passing the USA
PATRIOT Act which makes their work more efficient. In conducting the investigation, we are
already taking advantage of the new tools and authorities provided by the USA PATRIOT Act to
enhance our investigation. For example, we have, on a number of occasions made use of the new
authorities relating to nationwide search warrants, and amendments to 18 U.S.C. § 2703 that
allow us to more efficiently obtain e-mail and other information from internet service providers.
Furthermore, we have also relied on the Act to begin expanding our sharing of information with
the Intelligence Community.

I know from recent correspondence that the Department has received from members of
this Committee that a number of you have raised important questions about some of the
investigatory steps we have taken apart from the new legislation. I look forward during the
course of this hearing to learning more about your specific concerns and to explaining — to the
extent I can without compromising the on-going investigation — the reasons for the investigative
approaches we have taken.

In my opening remarks, I would like to briefly outline the nature of the threat we are
facing and explain why we believe the threat necessitates the type of investigative response we
have been pursuing.

The images of September j1th — the planes crashing into the twin towers; the grieving and
devastated faces of survivors, the heroism of the police, the firefighters and those passengers who
were forced into the role of combatants against terrorists — these images and many others have
been permanently seared into our collective national consciousness. Each of us has personal
recollections of that day where we were when we first heard, what our first thoughts were, what
we did to see if our loved ones were safe. It is a day that each of us will always remember in his
or her own way.

But as a nation, the overwhelming, brute fact of September 1 l~ is this: This country was
wantonly.and deceitfully assaulted by an enemy intent on destroying as many innocent lives as
possible. Before September 1 1~, Usama Bin Laden and his henchmen wanted to kill thousands
of innocent American civilians. On September 1 1th, they succeeded. Since September 1 1k”, Bin
Laden and his co-conspirators have brazenly announced that they will kill more of us. He and
his followers actually believe they have a duty to kill Americans. And those are not my words;
those are his words.

In a February 1998 directive, Bin Laden ordered his followers “to kill Americans and
plunder their money whenever and wherever they find it.” Just last month, Bin Laden made a
video declaring to his supporters in the Al Qaida network: “Bush and Blair.. . don’t understand
any language but the language of force. Every time they kill us, we will kill them, so the balance
of terror can be achieved.” He went on: “The battle has been moved inside America, and we shall
continue until we win this battle, or die in the cause and meet our maker.”

So we have a terrorist organization with thousands of members and followers worldwide,
which is fanatically committed to killing Americans on our own soil, through suicide attacks if
necessary. And unlike the enemies we have faced in past wars, this is an enemy that comes not
openly, but cravenly, in disguise. We know from what we have learned about the 19 hijackers
from September 1 1th and what we know about those responsible for earlier attacks against
America that the terrorists in the Al Qaida network plan their terror years in advance. They are
sophisticated, meticulous, and very patient.

Of particular concern is their use of so-called “sleepers.” A sleeper is a committed
terrorist sent sometimes years in advance into a possible target location, where he may assume a
new identity and lead an outwardly normal lifestyle, while waiting to spring into action to
conduct or assist in a terrorist attack. Although it would be inappropriate for me to get into
details of the pending investigations, I can give you an illustrative example of a sleeper from one
of the 1998 embassy bombing cases.

Mohamed Sadeek Odeh was convicted early this year for participating in the
August 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. He was sentenced to life
imprisonment in October. The evidence at trial established that Odeh was the technical advisor
to those who carried out the bombing, having received explosives training at some of Al Qaida’s
terrorist camps in Afghanistan. One of the key pieces of evidence against Odeh was a memo
book that had sketches of the vicinity of the embassy and what appeared to be a suggested
location for the bomb truck.

The evidence in the case revealed that Odeh became a sworn member of Al Qaida in
1992 in Afghanistan and was subsequently sent to Somalia to train Islamic militants. In 1994,
Odeh moved to Mombasa, a coastal town in southeast Kenya. Once in Mombasa, Odeh set up a
fishing business with the help of Muhammad Atef, the apparently late military commander of Al
Qaida. As part of this business, Odeh was given a large boat, which was to be used to transport
fish along the Kenyan coast. According to at least one of the co-defendants, this boat was used
to transport Al Qaida members from Kenya to Somalia in 1997 and was otherwise used for jihad.

Odeh got married in Mombasa in November 1994. Several individuals who later carried
out the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam attended the wedding. Between
1994 and 1997, Odeh maintained regular contact with various Al Qaida leaders, including Wadih
eI Hage and Mustafa Fadhil, two of the leaders of the East African cell of Al Qaida. In 1997, he
was sent to Somalia once again to train Islamic militants.

After living in Mombasa for a few years, Odeh moved to Malindi, another coastal town in
Kenya, and then later to a small village known as Witu, where he lived until August 1998. At all
times, Odeh lived modestly and quietly. For example, in Witu, Odeh lived in a hut, where he had
no telephone or other means of communication.

But when the time came to participate in plotting the embassy bombings, Odeh sprang
into action. In the Spring and Summer of 1998, he met other Al Qaida members in Kenya and
discussed ways to attack the United States. In the days immediately preceding the August 7,
1998 embassy bombings, Odeh met repeatedly with Al Qaida members who participated in the
bombing in Mombasa and Nairobi. Hours before the bombing, Odeh suddenly left Kenya, flying
to Pakistan during the night of August 6 and through to the early morning of August 7. Odeh
was detained at the Karachi airport (due to a bad false passport), and eventually returned to
Kenya.

Odeh is just one example of how an Al Qaida member was able over time to integrate
himself into the local environment in a way that made his terrorist activities much more difficult
to detect. Examples of other sleepers can be found in the Millennium bombing case, which
involved planned attacks against various U.S. facilities during the millennium, and in the 1993
World Trade Center bombing.

How can we combat the terrorists’ use of sleepers? In many ways it is more difficult than
trying to find a needle in a haystack because here the needle is masquerading as a stalk of hay.
We could continue as before, and hope we get lucky as we did in the Ressam case. Or, as we are
currently doing, we can pursue a comprehensive and systematic investigative approach, informed
by all-source intelligence, that aggressively uses every available legally permissible investigative

technique to try to identify, disrupt and, if possible incarcerate or deport sleepers and other
persons who pose possible threats to our national security.

Without understanding the challenge we face, one cannot understand the need for the
measures we have employed. Are we being aggressive and hard-nosed? You bet. In the
aftermath of September 11th, how could we not be? Our fundamental duty to protect America
and its people requires no less.

Yet it is equally important to emphasize that the detentions, the targeted interviews, and
the other aggressive investigative techniques we are currently employing are all legal under the
Constitution and applicable federal law as it existed both before and after September 10th•
Nobody is being held incommunicado; nobody is being denied the right to an attorney; nobody is
being denied due process. As federal prosecutors, we have great discretion under the
Constitution and well-established federal law to decide how aggressively to investigate and
charge cases. In light of the extraordinary threat facing our country, we have made a decision to
exercise our lawful prosecutorial discretion in a way that we believe maximizes our chances of
preventing future attacks against Amenca.

Before responding to your questions, let me now turn briefly to four areas that I know are
of particular interest to the Committee:

First, the number of persons who have been arrested or detained arising out of the
investigation into the events of September 1 1th and the conditions of their detention. As the
Attorney General indicated yesterday, there are currently 548 individuals who are in custody on
INS charges and 55 individuals in custody on federal criminal charges. The Department has
charged 104 individuals on federal criminal charges (which includes the 55 in custody), but some
of the indictments or complaints are under seal by order of court. Every detention is fully
consistent with established constitutional and statutory authority. Every person detained has
been charged with a violation of either immigration law or criminal law, or is being lawfully
detained on a material witness warrant.

Every one of these individuals has a right to access to counsel. In the criminal cases, and
the case of material witnesses, the person is provided a lawyer at government expense if the
person cannot afford one. While persons detained on immigration charges do not have a right to
lawyers at public expense, INS policy is to provide each person with information about available
pro bono representation. Every one of the persons detained, whether on criminal or immigration
charges or as a material witness, has the right to make phone calls to family and attorneys. None
is being held incommunicado.

The identity of every person who has been arrested on a criminal charge is public. We
have not released the names of persons being held on material witness warrants because they are
issued under seal as related to grand jury proceedings in different districts. Finally, although the
identity of INS detainees is not a secret, we have not compiled a public list of the persons
detained on immigration charges, both to protect the privacy of those detained and for legitimate
law-enforcement purposes. I emphasize, however, that there is nothing preventing any of these
individuals from identifying themselves.

Second, law enforcement is seeking to interview just over 5,000 persons voluntarily.
These are people who we believe may have information that is helpful to the investigation or to
disrupting ongoing terrorist activity. The list of persons we wish to interview was developed as
an effort to identify those who might have some information that could be helpful to the
investigation. The list was assembled by using common-sense criteria that take into account the
manner in which Al Qaida has traditionally operated. So, for example, persons have been
identified for interview because they entered the United States with a passport from one of about
two dozen countries, where Al Qaida typically recruits. Or people are identified for interviews
because they entered the country on particular types of visas that terrorists appears to favor.
Importantly, these persons are not suspects, but simply people with whom we want to talk
because they may have helpful information.

Third, I would like to discuss the monitoring of attorney-client communications under a
Bureau of Prisons regulation promulgated on October 31. The Justice Department has amended
a 1996 regulation that permits the monitoring of certain communications of inmates who are

subject to special administrative measures. This regulation currently applies to only 16 of the
158,000 inmates in the federal system. Under this pre-existing regulation, a very small group of
the most dangerous inmates are subject to special administrative measures if the attorney general
determines that unrestricted communication with these inmates could result in death or serious
bodily harm to others. When that determination has been made, restrictions are put on those
inmates’ ability to communicate with and contact others. The amendment promulgated on
October 31 extends the regulation to permit the monitoring of attorney-client communications
for this very small and discrete group of inmates only if the Attorney General makes an
additional finding that reasonable suspicion exists that a particular detainee may use
communications with attorneys to further or facilitate acts of terrorism.

The regulation provides for important safeguards to protect the attorney-client privilege.
First, the attorney and his client will be notified if their communication will be monitored.
Second, the team monitoring the communications will have no connection with any ongoing
prosecution that involves the client. Third, no privileged information will be retained by the
persons monitoring the conversations; the only information retained will be unprivileged threat
information. Fourth, absent an imminent emergency, the government will have to seek court
approval before any information is used for any purpose from those conversations. And fifth, no
information that is protected by the attorney-client privilege may be used for prosecution.
This regulation accords with established constitutional and legal authority. Courts have

long recognized that a client’s communications are not privileged if they are in furtherance of
criminal activity. And the Supreme Court has expressly recognized that the government may,
consistent with the right to counsel, monitor attorney-client communications if there is a
legitimate law-enforcement reason for doing so and if privileged communications are not used
against the defendant. Both those conditions are met here.

Finally, I’d like to briefly mention military commissions. We are at war: Our homeland
was suddenly and deliberately attacked from abroad on September 11, resulting in the intentional
murder of thousands of unarmed civilians. Usama Bin Laden has candidly said he intends to
continue his attacks as long as he and his organization are able. In view of such circumstances,
military commissions are a traditional way of bringing justice to persons charged with offenses
under the laws of armed conflict. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the use of such
commissions.

The use of such commissions is not only legally proper; there may be sound policy
reasons to employ it in individual cases. Proceedings before military commissions may be
needed to safeguard classified information at the trial of particular members of Al Qaida. Also,
military commissions are equipped to deal with the significant security concerns that can arise
from a trial of the terrorists. We are all aware that trying terrorists in our cities could place
judges and juries—and, indeed, the cities themselves—at risk. Finally, bear in mind that the attacks
of September 11 were launched by a foreign power and killed thousands of innocent people.
These were war crimes, in addition to domestic crimes. There is nothing inappropriate or unfair
in trying war crimes as they often have been tried—before military commissions.

The President’s order represents just the first step in invoking this traditional power to
prosecute those who violate the well-settled law of war. The order assigns the Department of
Defense primary responsibility for developing the specific procedures to be used. Because that
process is still ongoing, it is simply too early to discuss the specific details of how any such
commissions would operate. However, certain protections are already built into the order, which
can be expanded upon by regulations promulgated by the Defense Department. The order
specifies that all persons will have the right to an attorney. The order specifies that the
proceedings must allow a full and fair trial of the charges. In addition, the order requires humane
conditions of pretrial detention, including the right to free exercise of religion during detention.
And notably, the President will himself make the determination whether trial by commission will
be appropriate in an individual case.

I would now be happy to respond to any questions the Committee may have.

9