Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Newt Gingrich
May 11,2004
SUMMARY
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also
known as the 9/11 Commission) has an opportunity to describe the system,
culture, structures, budgets, metrics, and goals that America needs to be safe
in an increasingly dangerous world.
The greatest contribution the 9/11 Commission can make is to tell the
country the truth about the scale of change that is needed and then let the
elected and appointed officials make the compromises.
2. Future security needs are vastly greater, more urgent, and more
challenging than people think:
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a. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD, mostly nuclear) and
Weapons of Mass Murder (WMM, mostly biological but with
some chemical weapons) are more real and much more deadly
than either the American people or their political-governmental
system think. Despite all of the rhetoric since 9/11, America is
much more like Britain in 1935 than Britain in 1940. We are
vastly underestimating the threat and the urgency;
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underside to the emerging global economic system and is a
force multiplier for any terrorist group with money.
a. Comprehensive;
b. Real time;
c. Make sure you have the right theory of the problem and the
solution (see John Nagl's Counterinsurgency Lessons from
Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife for a
classic example of learning by the British and rejecting learning
by the Americans);
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oversight, congressional limitations on activities have all had a
dramatic impact on our intelligence and national security institutions.
To try to explain the absence of adequate human intelligence
capabilities on 9/11 without reference to the Church Committee and a
quarter of century of congressional hostility to dealing in hostile
environments is simply historically false. To try to develop the future
national security system by focusing only on the Executive Branch is
a profound misreading of the American Constitution. It is time for
some group to tell the truth about the need for Congressional reform
in national security.
8. When we have everything right, everything fixed, with even the best
intelligence system in the world and the wisest leaders willing to
listen, we will still run a high risk of being surprised because we have
active opponents who study us and practice denial and deception.
Therefore, we need to have a surprise-surviving defense and
Homeland Security system.
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Planning & Leadership Model
VISION
STRATEGIES
All
("A project is a definable communication
I delegatable achievement and the occurs in the
PROJECTS I key to entrepreneurial rather than mind of the
L bureaucratic behavior. listener
The 9/11 event proved you can focus the irreconcilables and kill Americans.
Memo on Previous Statements Relating to Terrorism
by
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich
Excerpts from Window of Opportunity by Newt Gingrich with David Drake and
Marianne Gingrich - Chapter 10: The Dilemmas of American Foreign and Military
Policy (1984)
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because all basic policies must have public support if they are to succeed."
(P- 239)
• "We are a nation that has a nagging toothache called terrorism. We have
gotten through the last terrorist assault with almost no casualties, few lessons
and no medicine."
The National Journal
August 3, 1985
"Reagan Gets Mixed Reviews for His Loud Speech But Small Stick on Terrorism"
By Christopher Madison
• "What I'm trying to do is start an argument on how we live in the first third
of the 21st century. My centerpiece is that we are now a country whose
problems are 100 or 1,000 times bigger than its solutions. Our three biggest
problems are that government costs more than society will pay, we are not
competitive in the world market and there is a requirement that we lead the
free world through the [Western] alliance and in the fight against terrorism."
Gingrich Comment made a day after February 26, 1993 World Trade Center
bombing
Then minority whip, Gingrich said that Clinton needed to be "cautious" in cutting
the defense budget. "There's a very real requirement for human intelligence and
military strength. Every time we have any display of weakness, any display of
timidity.. .here are people eager on the planet to take advantage of us."
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Comment made by Dr. Roy Godson 4/6/95
• "It is entirely proper for Congress, if necessary, to take the lead in calling for
this type of comprehensive assessment of terrorism In the early 1980s,
Congress, at the prodding of a then relatively little-known Congressman
from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, forced the Executive Branch to issue annual
public reports on Soviet efforts to influence Western public opinion, and in
so doing performed a great service. If not for Congressional urging, today
we would probably be without a national narcotics assessment as a weapon
against international organized crime. As the national interest demanded it,
Congress pushed the Executive Branch; today, a comprehensive
opportunity-oriented assessment of terrorism is very much in that same
national interest."
Testimony April 06, 1995
President National Strategy Information Center House Judiciary International
Terrorism
By Dr. Roy Godson
• "But the objective fact of the future is that the primary dangers of terrorism
on the planet are essentially those of Islamic extremism and particularly
those financed and abetted by the Iranian government."
The Record
May 10, 1995
"Gingrich: Main Terrorist Threat Still From Iran"
• "We are, in fact, entering the age of terrorism," Gingrich said. "We've had
this fantasy since the fall of the Berlin Wall that the age of freedom has
arrived." Terrorism means more than bombs set off by shadowy groups,
Gingrich said, but can extend to states threatening neighbors.
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Gingrich Comment made 7/29/96
• "I'm just saying I think you've got really look at what is your overall
systematic plan for dealing with terrorism, where do you get the best punch
for the dollar? I'm just suggesting to you that we want to be very helpful but
we want to be helpful in a way that is effective and that actually gets the job
done to save lives; it doesn't just make people feel good spending money,
lots of activity, and then you discover, oh, here's this huge loophole that
somebody over here was able to walk right through and pull off their act of
terrorism."
Gingrich remarks made during the Keeper of the Flame Award Dinner, Center for
Security Policy (9/18/96)
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Gingrich Response to U.S. intelligence failures to anticipate Pakistani underground
nuclear tests
• ".. .We have too little funding for intelligence, too few assets, too few
analysts. I hope lawmakers will consider this when they adopt the
intelligence budget."
• "We need much better human intelligence, much more sophisticated efforts
to go after terrorists and others."
Gingrich Response to U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan after Embassy
bombings
Gingrich Discussing the $1.5 billion emergency supplemental funds approved for
U.S. intelligence agencies for FY99
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• Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, credited Gingrich as the main architect of the
spending package, saying he had been pushing for an additional $1 billion
for intelligence for several months. $200 million of the package was added
to intelligence for anti-terrorism efforts involving the FBI along with the
CIA and the Pentagon.
• "Past cuts in intelligence have hurt key programs, including innovation of
advanced technological collection techniques as well espionage operations
and analysis. The new programs are specifically tailored to provide
protection to both U.S. citizens and our country's interests in the new
millennium."
The Washington
Post
October 23,1998
• Phase I, commission's view of the future believes in part that, (11): "We
should expect conflicts in which adversaries, because of cultural affinities
different from our own, will resort to forms and levels of violence shocking
to our sensibilities."
• Conclusions to draw, Phase I, in part, (1): "America will become
increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military
superiority will not entirely protect us.. .States, terrorists, and other
disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass
disruption, and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American
soil, possibly in large numbers."
• First key objective stated in Phase II: "To Defend The United States And
Ensure That It Is Safe From The Dangers Of A New Era."
• First section of executive summary in Phase III, Securing the National
Homeland: "The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with
the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability
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of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. A direct attack against
American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century."
• Among the 50 recommendations in Phase III that the commission pushed
for: 1) "The President should develop a comprehensive strategy to heighten
America's ability to prevent and protect against all forms of attack on the
homeland, and to respond to such attacks if prevention and protection fail."
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Senator Rudman's Senate Testimony (9/21/01) praising Newt Gingrich as the
"Father" of the Homeland Security concept
• "Let me tell you, interestingly enough, you know, Newt Gingrich, who was
the father of this idea, on the theory that no good deed goes unpunished,
when he left the House, was put on this commission. And he is a historian
who brought a lot of insight."
CIA Director George Tenet's comment at Joint House and Senate Select
Intelligence Committee on pre-9/11 intelligence failures that Newt Gingrich was
the only person to obtain an intelligence funding increase in the 1990s (10/17/02)
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