Full text transcript
MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews video clip (September 18, 2001)
Chris Matthews: "One week ago terrorists attacked New York's World Trade Center and The Pentagon. Tonight the investigation has reached global proportions as the world tracks down those responsible. I'm Chris Matthews and this is a special edition of Hardball."
Chris Matthews: "In a moment we are going to be joined by Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. But first joining us now is U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon. He's a Republican of Pennsylvania. He's Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Readiness. Mr. Weldon, we've talked to you many times before. You are no newcomer to this quest of national security. Let me ask you the intelligence question, however...Could we have prevented this?"
Congressman Curt Weldon: "Well, I don't know if we could have prevented it, Chris, but there are things that we have been saying in the intelligence area over the past several years that we've not yet implemented. One of the problems we have is that we have 32 federal agencies that have classified systems. And the problem is that each of these agencies' classified systems are stovepiped. They don't want to share that data with other agencies. Now, working with the CIA and the FBI we've been able to begin to combine the defense intelligence with the CIA and the FBI in a project called CI21. But what we've asked for for the past three years in our defense legislation is a national data collaboration center and data fusion center."
Chris Matthews: "How about that? Let me just ask you, Congressman, how about that? Why don't we do that?"
Congressman Curt Weldon: "That's what we should do, Chris. You need to have the data from these 32 information sets available and high speed computers using software systems like STARLIGHT to run this information quickly because you can't analyze it with ordinary human beings reading. You've got to have modern technology."