>> sir, in light of that question. as general brogan said we really are at the curb. we are looking for new technology to be able to give us that lighter weight and in particular to our hard plates. if it was found, we would buy it. i don't know how much we would buy but we would be buying it. we don't have it out there right now. >> again general fuller, if it was found do you have the resources available now or would you need an additional line item in the appropriations bills? i guess that is what i would like to know. do you have the authority to pursue that if you saw a product that you liked and thought was worth purchasing for the troops?

host: jess bravin from "the wall street journal," thank you so much for coming in. we're here to talk with you today about military tribunals and how they diver from civilian trials. talk to us about where weir at in this discussion right now.

guest: well, last year the congress reauthorized the military commissions anth, added a few more procedureal rights. there are several detainees that have been awaiting charge at guantanamo bay before military commission. but most is focused on five co-defendants who are accused of conspiring and orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. and the obama administration has vacillated between having a military commission trial for them or assigning them to trial in federal district court. initially in new york. and now uncertain where that trial would be, if it does take place in federal district court. host: the attorney general eric holder testified before congress yesterday. what did we learn from him? guest: we did not learn that much. we learned a decision about the venue for the 9/11 trial is weeks away, rather than months. of course, months are made up of weeks, so it's hard to know

exactly what that means. he defended the administration's preference to have the choice of using either military commissions or federal district court, which is the same options that the bush administration had previously. he didn't really elimination much that we didn't already know. this was an appropriations committee hearing rather than a policy hearing. i'd say that the attorney general didn't back away from his own preference, being a former civilian prosecutor himself. but he didn't insist that these particular defendants would go to one place or another. host: you reported this week that the obama administration may be leaning towards a military tribunal, but reversing court from a civilian trial would bring its own complications. last month, defense department lawyers concluded that he can't

plead guilty to capital crimes in a military tribunal. that means the government might have to conduct a full trial and prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. how significant is that? >> well, i've attended in the court proceedings at guantanamo bay before the military commissions there, including the one where they attempted to plead guilty before the military judge. but military commissions are a -- they're a novel enterprise and the united states does not have much experience with them. and many of their procedures are from the uniformed code of military justice. one of the procedures in that code, which is intended to promote the discipline and good order of american military forces, is that in a capital charge, a death sentence cannot be imposed unless the defendant has been found gment guilty and death sentence imposed by unanimous verdict. that is, i'm told, part of the

paternalistic aspect of ucmj, because it involves a hierarchy with soldiers charged and generals often wanting punishment. that's perhaps to protect them from any sort of pressure from the command structure. that may be important when you're dealing with persons not part of the military. however, that is the way the law is currently written. so the government has to follow the law. and the military justice specialist, the department of defense concluded that that is what is required. what the obama administration tried to do when this went up to the defense secretary's office, secretary gates' office, was find some sort of work-around, some kind of procedural way, where maybe if the defendant really want to plead guilty and the judge really wants to take that plea, they can find some abbreviated procedure that is short of a full trial, but more than just the normal hearing where a defendant pleads guilty. whether that is legally sufficient is unknown because

this is a new system and it is not given the kind of deference that the federal courts or courts martial are by the review in federal courts. host: how significant is that in terms of what a verdict may be? and when the obama administration considers what the outcome of this will be. guest: well, there is a sort of abstract nature to this. for people familiar with the allegations, the ultimate result of guilty regarding whichever form he is tried in does not seem much in doubt, you know, for people in the criminal justice system, probably the overwhelming number of defendants in the american criminal justice system are convicted on evidence much less clear than already exists against ca lead shake muhammud. whether he is put before a jury of 12 new yorkers or a six navy

captains, given what i have seen of him in court, just the open source evidence that was collected before he was even captured, it seems extremely unlikely that sms someone is going to be found not guilty by a jury or military panel. so it's really not a question of whether he's convicted. the questions really are two areas. they meanly deal not with his conduct, but with the conduct of the united states. a federal district judge does not answer to the administration and therefore may be more inclined to hear what defense lawyers argue when it comes to his alleged mistreatment by the united states. if the government is found to have been engaged in misconduct, that might affect -- that might

atect the sentencing. so the government wants a death sentence. if the government were to find the conduct so egregious, it might punish. but it's quite speculative. i think as a realistic prospect, whether he is tried in federal court, the question for him is life in prison or death sentence. >> on the same day i announced the decision to try khalid sheikh mohammed in an article three court in new york, i made the decision that a man would be tried in a military commission. he is one of the people responsible for the bombing of the u.s.s. cole. a military target was involved. the casualties are brave say lors, military -- sail --

sailors, military men. there are rules of evidence that exist in military commissions that are more favorable towards the acceptance of hearsay evidence. on a case bicase determination, you have to make decisions as to where the case can be best tried. it doesn't mean that you're being unfair, i think, to the defendant. you're simply looking at the forum that really best suits the particular facts of each case. military commissions certainly play a role.@@@@h

for instance, i think after world war ii, after we did drop the bomb, i think the abhorrence of it was so strong and maybe to deter other countries from doing it, we took that stand, because no one wants to brag about having dropped an atomic bomb, etch though i believe it was necessary. i think the political minds took over from the military. i think that's why america hasn't really won a war flat out or even declared wars out flat out since that time. host: let's get a response from jess bravin. guest: well, after world war ii, the japanese high command was

put on trial. the international military tribunal at tokyo. and that was a trial by the allied powers. but there were many, many more military commissions held throughout the far east. u.s. army commissions held in occupied japan and u.s. navy commissions held in guam. those trials were kind of interesting by the way that they established the standards of prisoner treatment that the united states expected when enemy forces held american prisoners. i did a piece a couple years ago that looked at the records of those trial. it was interesting to see what the u.s. considered to be war crimes at that time. for instance, not registering prisoners with the international red cross or making prisoners perform exercises on a sunday, failing to post camp rules. things like that were treated as war crimes by the united states when they were done in connection with americans held captive by our enemies. so it is an interesting point to look at. so there is some history from the far east war that is worth

looking at in terms of military justice. i'm not sure the decision regarding atomic weapons is quite on point, however. host: is there a separation right now between military decision and political decisions when it comes to this trial? so much of what we're hearing is political aspect of where it should happen. guest: that is something a lot of people in the legal community find a bit troubling. yes, there is a certain level -- a juncture betweenly or justice decisions. but when there's an appearance that the government is shopping around for which forum based on political concerns from members of congress, where they think they're most likely to get a conviction, where they'll have the best advantage in conducting the trial, to a certain extent, that's the legitimate part of the gamesmanship in litigation. when it becomes political decisions about prosecution choice, some judges will raise eyebrows. host: let's go to susan,

republicans line in riverside, california. caller: first of all, nobody talks about the motivation. you have to start from that. representativepress.org talks about the motivation behind 9/11. we were attacked for our support for israel, and assault and battery -- and osama bin laden said it, khalid sheikh mohammed said it and others have said it. not only support for israel, but what the money is going to. cluster bombs and the whole bit. for settlements. that yahoo! is going against the law by doing that. he's extending more by saying that. aerial sharone said something interesting, he said that they own america. guest: khalid sheikh mohammed and some of his co-defendants have made similar sorts of

claims. they want to change the subject to what they think are america's provocations that led them or they believe forced them to commit acts of terror and mass murder in the united states and against americans. this is a typical thing that political or religious fanatics do in trials like this. they try to change the subject to what the government or authorities did that provoked them to take some kind of extreme action. but when it comes down to law, motive doesn't matter. the fact that someone may be -- you know, feel aggrieved politically is not at all a justification for committing a crime. and i don't think that you're going to find a lot of interest among any -- from the most stern to the greatest bleeding heart judge in the american judiciary, civilian or military, will care about the political complaints

that defendants who committed terror acts have as a justification for murder. host: attorney general holder talked about osama bin laden today. "usa today" reports that he told congress that bin laden will never face trial in the united states because he will not be captured alive. homeder compared bin laden to mass murderer charles manson and predicted events will ensure we will be reading the miranda rights to the corpse of bin laden, not to the al qaeda leader as a captive. guest: the charles manson part, which is charles manson was arrested in california in 1969 and tried for a series of mass murderers. he was a serial killer and a mass murderer, most famously sharon tate and her friends' murders in los angeles in 1969. but when he was tried, he was able to invoke the constitutional procedures and he was convicted.

there is a similarity that charles manson is also a fanatic so. he, perhaps like some of these defendants, and we've seen some behavior like this in the preliminary hearings at guantanamo bay, he was less interested in evading punishment than to make statements. he also tried to change the subject about what was going on in the country and why the children in the country -- i mean, he was trying to not get into, oh, you got the wrong guy. i was never there. it was not that kind of defense. it was the same kind of fanatic defense, like you guys are the real criminals, sort of thing. so that type of fanatical show trial effort that he and his co-defendants puft on didn't really -- put on didn't really stand in the way of him being convicted and essentially sentenced to death. he wasn't excuted for other reasons. so i think holder was trying to say charles manson, when people talk about the u.s. constitution protecting americans and how

aliens don't deserve those protections, well, charles manson, not the most sympathetic of americans was convicted under those rules and and still has a very unpleasant existence in prison. so i think that was his point. don't think that we're coddling people. the constitution protects americans who happen to be murderers as well as others. i think that was his point. in terms of whether bin laden would be captured or not, that was an interesting statement, not so much for its legal views, but it seemed to reflect perhaps a policy choice that the administration has made that they will not take him prisoner, that they will execute him or shoot on site. he seemed to be suggesting that he thinks bin laden would prefer to commit suicide than be captured alive. and i don't know. maybe that's true. sometimes people who try to

commit suicide are taken alive anyway. i was a little puzzled by the de10tive way he said that, unless it reflectings -- reflects a decision that just the way a predator strikes or assassinate enemy commanders, unless they've made a decision they won't take him alive, which raises some interesting legal questions as well, because under the laws of wark an enemy who surrenders or is captured alive, you're not permitted to execute him on the field. host: let's go to rob, democrats line in augusta, georgia. caller: hello. there are lots of different charges against these guys. why not try them in both military and civilian court where the charges apply in each? our legal system has gained quite a bit. why not use the system to our advantage? guest: well, one, it may not be

necessary. in other words, if someone is convicted and, let's say, given an extraordinarily harsh sentence, it is sort of a -- it may be considered a waste of resources to try them again to get to the same result, unless there is some wholly separate sort of crimes that have not been addressed by the first trial. although you could probably define the allegations against k.s.m. and the co-defendants under military law, some of them, or under civilian law, pretty much all the allegations, they all come from the same complex activities. it's not like he was orchestrating terrorist attacks on the one hand, and also running, you know, a numbers game on the side or something. it's not like there's some separate civilian -- some separate set of charges like he was -- had some real estate scam in florida in addition to organizing terror attacks. so i think that if someone were

acquitted in one court, sometimes the government can find legal reasons why he's not subject to double jeopardy, meaning try twice for the same thing. an example might be the police officers in the rodney king beating in los angeles. they were acquitted in state court on those charges and then tried again under federal parallel charges. host: let's go to frank, independent line in largo, florida. caller: good morning to you both. host: good morning. go right ahead. caller: follow my line of reasoning here. this will be brief. section two of the patriot act states that the president can claim any misdemeanor anywhere in the world an act of terrorism and hold said person indefinitely. i believe it was the department of justice a few weeks ago claimed that if an american abroad is believed to be committing or involved in acts of terrorism, they can be killed without a trial. now, combine that with the

recently unclassified documents from the department of homeland security, the assessment of ring wing extremism and the lexicon and it seems that patriot groups , anybody with a dissenting political opinion is being demonized by not only the federal government, but also in the media, and it seems like we're being set up to be put in military tribunals if we don't claim to be part of an extremist group or a terrorist group of some type. and i would like your guest's opinion on that. guest: well, under the military commissions act, only people who are not citizens of the united states are eligible for trial before a military commission. so flat out that can't happen the way the law is written right now. but it does raise another question, which is is there any reason the law distinguishes american citizens from foreign citizens. that actually is a potential

legal flaw in the law itself, because courts often take -- reviewing courts take a skeptical eye for classifications that seem to favor one group over others for reasons unrelated to the purpose of the tribunal, which is to find out who's guilt while following fair procedures. so one of the challenges that the defense lawyers have raised through the military commissions act is that it violates the concept of equal protection and due process by giving non-u.s. citizens a lower standard of justice than those of americans who are charged with identical defenses would that would face. host: let's go to charlotte, north carolina. republicans line, david. hi, david. caller: hi. my issue is not whether these guys are going to get convicted. i believe they will no matter what you put them in, either military or civilian. the problem that i have with putting them in a civilian trial is the rules of evidence. the rules of discovery.

facing your accuser. that a judge can kick out. like i said, i don't believe that will happen. but there are some judges out there that would look at some of the ways that evidence was gathered, the way conceptions were gotten. i don't consider waterboarding torture, but there are a lot of people that do. and how that could be manipulated in a civilian trial and, like i said, maybe not get them off. it could get kicked out -- if you kick out enough evidence in a trial, people go free. host: let's get a response. guest: that is a good point. the question of a potential government misconduct clouding a verdict has hung over this case from the beginning. and one of the factors that

affects pretty much all the cases of guantanamo detainees is that the majority of evidence is statements taken from coercive circumstances from other detainees. some lawyers contend indefinite imperezment is in itself a coercive circumstance. in the case of khalid sheikh mohammed and the 9/11 co-defendants, it's true that federal courts, partly because they are independent, don't follow the military chain of command and may be more familiar with a broader range of due process precedence in military courts. however, for this very reason, the justice department team that has been putting together its case has done everything it can to avoid relying on statements and evidence taken from the c.i.a. incorrespondent ration period for khalid sheikh mohammed and the co-defendants. the hundreds of f.b.i. and justice department lawyers who

have been working on that case have tried to build a case that does not use that evidence at all. it takes it off the table for the very reason the caller raises. but they don't want to defend the united states government. they want to prosecute the defendants. military prosecutors and the case that they have built have tended to rely more on statements obtained while in military or government custody, partly because they have, they hope, a broader leeway in introducing evidence. also, they may be less familiar in the justice department with prosecuting cases like this since the violence on the us-mexico

border among other topics. this is just over two hours.

>> the senate will come to order. good afternoon. the subcommittee would like to welcome robert mueller director of the federal bureau of investigation to discuss the guise 2011 budget request and related issues. we are pleased to have you here, director mueller and thank you for your appearance. the fbi's budget request for 2011 totals nearly $8.2 billion. within such a large totals there are clearly many programmatic and policy issues to cover, too many in fact for anyone here to cover exhaustively. but i do hope we can use this opportunity to focus on at least a few important areas and make sure we touch on those which we consider of high-priority. the first of these areas for me is white-collar crime.

our economy has suffered billions of dollars in losses due to the illegal and immoral behavior of individuals who capitalize on weaknesses in the regulatory and enforcement system to profit at the expense of shareholders, investors, homeowners workers and taxpayers. while many firms on wall street have recovered and are in fact making substantial profits again, there are millions of regular americans who are still hurting and have yet to see any real justice for the economic violence that was perpetrated on them. i am glad to see that this administration has recognized the error of past practices and is now proposing to invest in your fraud enforcement programs rather than raiding those resources year after year to pay for other rarities mr. director. this is the priority now. what remains to be determined is whether the size of this investment is sufficient to the size of the problem your you are

budget request proposes to add 62 new agents for white-collar crime, but compared to the thousands of active cases in billions of dollars of losses, the question is, does that seem small and i am anxious to explore this during your testimony. the second area of concern is law enforcement in indian country. this subcommittee has heard many times and from many different people have desperate the law enforcement situation is really in indian country. unfortunately it is not obvious exactly how to solve this problem while clarifications to the jurisdictional construct help, wilmore agents or more prosecutors are better evidence processing capabilities, will that do the trick? do we need to focus on building community trust between the tribes and federal law enforcement entities were on significant substance abuse programs among tribal populations?

i am sure that these are all elements of the solution and the key is to find the right mix of those elements. you are budget contains some resources to address one part of this may extend that request is certainly welcome. for too long the fbi has failed to rick west the resources necessary to improve its presence in indian country or to follow up aggressively on the execution of existing funds to make sure that the resources you have are actually reaching the native american communities for which they are intended. ..

to naim recent examples where dozens of others apprehended during the previous administration. i'd like to think that much of the current criticisms and misrepresentations are the result of misunderstandings about what's taking place in this case. the fact of the matter is the fbi has made it clear that it's experienced knowledgeable agents to question abdulmatallab.

on this case i believe there are also fundamental misunderstanding some of the overreaching legal framework in which you operate when someone is apprehended within our borders for committing or attempting to commit a terrorist act. what can that person legally be held without charge or without provision of constitutional rights whether he is a u.s. citizen or not once in custody what are the provisions with regard to his advice on rights and to remain silent, his right to remain council and the government's right to use statements against him. these are all questions i am sure will be explored. the fbi cannot simply take a suspect apprehended domestically and just packed him off to guantanamo bay. you can't turn him over which

does not have authority to operate domestically. you can't decide to get him to the military where by the way he would still be entitled to constitutional rights. i understand that there are differences of opinion and we look forward to exploring them in the context of the reality and the constitution which we find ourself. i intend to propose to pursue the topics in more detail during our round of questioning the and i also hope to address newly emerging problems with the development of the sentinel case management system. this is a critical effort and one that absolutely must succeed in order for the fbi to fully bring its investigative technology into the new century. before we go into these issues i would like to recognize the ranking member mr. wolf for any comment he may have. >> thank you mr. chairman. director mueller i join the chairman welcoming you this morning to testify before the

committee and pleased we are holding the hearing today for 2011 you are seeking an incorporation of 8.3 increasing three and 66 million or 4.6. we look forward to your testimony and increases you are seeking as well as the fbi's continued transformation activities to fulfill its role as the key domestic counterterrorism and intelligence agency. in addition i'm interested to hear more of the fbi effort to establish a new interagency capability for the interrogation of high-value terrorist suspects pursuant to the recommendations of interrogations task force set up last year by its second quarter and yesterday i asked the attorney general and i did a letter donner to the administration asking that the hague be relocated at the counterterrorism center. the whole purpose of establishing a counterterrorism center was to bring people of different backgrounds and agencies together and rather than having it in a separate

building away i would like to get your comments with regard to that. this function is critical to the intelligence gathering has christmas day bombing revealed there is an unacceptable level of confusion about how such interrogations' should be handled. last, i would like you to pass on to your people our appreciation for their hard work, the work of your agents, analysts and support staff to protect the nation from terrorism and crime is perhaps the most important activity that we support in this subcommittee. i recognize the tireless efforts that has required to carry out responsibilities and door people should be commended and quite frankly speaking for myself negative you should be commended. i think that you have had a great service to the country. i am personally -- your wife and i would probably defer. i am not looking forward to the day that you leave because i think that it is a difficult job and you've done outstanding.

your people have done a good job but you have to back and i want to go on the record with that. with that i yield back to the chairman for questions. >> as you well know, you're written statement will be made part of the record and i would like to proceed with your testimony. thank you. >> thank you. [inaudible] appreciate the opportunity to appear today -- [inaudible] to discuss the budget for 2011. thank you. the fbi is requesting $8.3 billion to fund more than 33,000 fbi agents and staff and build and maintain our infrastructure. this funding is critical to continue our progress and

transforming the fbi into an intelligence driven, threat based agency and carry out our mission of protecting the nation from the ever changing national security and criminal threats. let me start by discussing a few of the most significant threats. fighting terrorism remains our highest priority of the fbi. over the past year the threat of terrorist attack has proven to be both persistent and global. al qaeda and its affiliates are still committed to striking us in the united states. we saw this with the plot by an al qaeda operative to detonate explosives in new york subways and attempted airline bombing plot on christmas day to which mr. chairman you have delude. both incidents involved explosive devices and underscore the importance of our continued to develop explosives intelligence to support and guide terrorism related investigations. home grown and lone wolf extremists oppose an equally serious threat.

we saw this with the fort hood shootings and the to the bombings of the office tower in dallas and federal building in springfield illinois. we've also seen u.s.-born extremists plotting to commit terrorist acts overseas as was the case with the heavily armed conspiracy in north carolina and david hensley's and voltmann in theé@xgxgxgxgxgññgñgñgñgñgñ7ñge

range of individuals and groups many with different skills motives and target's. terrorist increasingly use the internet to communicate to recruit, to plan and raise money. foreign nations continue to launch attacks on u.s. government computers and private industry. hoping to steal our most sensitive secrets or benefit from economic espionage. a criminal hackers pose a dangerous threat as well as they use the anonymity of the internet is to the identities and money comes to the across the country and around the world. these attacks undermine our national security and pose a growing threat to our economy. we are seeking 100 skill six deacons 63 positions and 46 million for the cyber programs to strengthen the ability to defend against cyberattack. let me turn a moment to white collar crime. mortgage fraud is the most significant in efforts to combat financial fraud.

mortgage fraud investigations have grown fivefold since 2003 and more than two-thirds of these cases involve losses of more than $1 million each. the trend is continue to receive more than 75,000 regarding mortgage fraud this year alone. securities fraud is also on the bias. 33% more security case is open today than we had five years ago. the economic downturn has exposed a series of historical the large ponzi schemes and other investment fraud. and of course health care fraud remains a priority for the fbi given the estimates of the millions lost to fraud each year in health care programs. investigating and bringing to justice those who commit fraud is critical to restore confidence to the nation's mortgage, financial securities and health care industries. we are requesting funds for 367 new positions and 75 million for white collar crime program.

fiscal year 2011 budget also requests new funding for the threats from crimes in indian country and international organized crime. we are also seeking additional funds for the infrastructure to address these national security threats and crime problems including funding for training facilities, information technology, for in six services and as you point out, mr. chairman my written statement submitted discusses these requests in far greater detail. i will say over the past several years we worked to better integrate strategic direction with a five-year budget approach and with a more focused human-resources management. the fbi siskel management has been recognized by the inspector general to the congenital as the top performer in the department of justice and we are in pace, on pace to achieve high earing and staff goals this year. chairman mollohan, ranking member will, i would like to conclude by thanking you and the other members of the committee

for your support and particularly supported the men and women of the fbi and i am happy to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you, director mueller. i would like to begin by revisiting the abdulmutallab case and attempting to clarify some issues that have been subject to a lot of conflict to the city both in the press and the public and on the hill. some of the controversies stem from confusion or misunderstanding perhaps about how you preceded on the day that abdulmutallab was arrested and whether the intelligence committee was consulted about the handling of the case. so, mr. director, can you walk us through the basics of what had occurred on christmas day and how you interact with the intelligence committee has almost a chronology? >> yes. starting around noon -- and again i moss pacific to the

acoustics not specific on the times but around noon or a little afterwards we received word an individual on a plan in bound to detroit from amsterdam apparently attempted to set off something. the initial reports indicated may have been firecrackers. when the plane landed first on the scene were those of the airport principally customs, border patrol, i.c.e. agents. we were certainly their ourselves and learned the individual attempted to trigger an explosive device on the plane and had been over -- and had been stopped by one of the passengers. he was placed into the custody of i believe customs border patrol and because the device attempted to ignite it had burned him. he was taken in custody to the

hospital. as we found out about that, we immediately attempted and did find out information about him, understood that he was nigerian background, have flown in from amsterdam and immediately e-mail traffic began from detroit to our national joint terrorism task force here in washington and thereby various agencies, department of homeland security, and ctc and the intelligence community about what information we had, and that correspondence to read through the afternoon. approximately 2:00, a little bit before, a little afterwards, our agents went to the hospital and determined to try to interview abdulmutallab, with the specific objective of finding out whether there was any immediate threat of additional bombs on other

planes or additional persons on that plan who might constitute a threat and spend up to an hour interviewing abdulmutallab. as has been pointed out, the determination was made not to provide miranda warning some the believe this was information necessary to determine public safety and so that interview was conducted along those lines. we continued to obtain information from the various entities in the intelligence community throughout the afternoon and at 5:00 this evening there was a video teleconference and i was established by the john brennan at the national security council attended on that video teleconference where most of the members of the intelligence community through representatives of the department of justice, national nctc, security council and of

course representatives of the fbi to review what had happened and what was going to happen thereafter. there was the ongoing assumption at that time that abdulmutallab, having been arrested on the united states soil, but proceed through the article 3 process. there was no debate at that time whether it was the issue of whether or not to mirandize and raise the discussion that afternoon. later that night it was determined to try again to interview abdulmutallab, and that time it was determined both with department of justice and the fbi that we would follow the procedures and attempt to interview him and provide him his miranda warnings. when the agents went in the evening, he was less responsive to interviewing. he was not providing information basic booking information. he was read his miranda rights and discontinued any conversation afterwards.

he remained in custody in the hospital that night and was brought before the magistrate the following day and was prevented before the magistrate as was required under rule five the federal rules of criminal procedure. later on the following day. that brief overview is what happened on that day and it was consistent with the practices we have utilized generally throughout any arrests we do in the united states. >> was the intelligence community communication how this was handled, with their cooperation among the law enforcement agencies and during this process? >> there was continuous coordination and on obtaining of information to the extent we could pull it for various archives that afternoon of christmas. and the communication was on between persons not at the highest level in other words the odni wouldn't have been in that

speed conversation or the janet napolitano or the attorney general, but the discussions throughout the afternoon there was a colloquy between various elements of the intelligence community and law enforcement community. as the defense unfolded. >> were his arrests in the process that you just described handled any differently than any other terrorist suspect may or may not be handled any differently, in the other suspect arrested in the united states either before or after 9/11? >> the only distinction i would say is we made the determination early on mount two mirandize in the early on in the interview. we knew he had a very short window of time to conduct the interview and believed that in that window of time we had to focus on immediate information relating to public security.

>> you indicated that the next day the suspect was taken before the magistrate? >> yes, required under the rules to present the individual in custody before the magistrate generally required to dewitt within a 24-hour period. >> is there a mirandize requirement? >> that happens when you're presented to the magistrate the magistrate will review your rights for you and it was done on that occasion. at least that is my understanding. spriggs of the court itself would advise the defendant of the miranda rights that time. so, really there's a requirement i mean, listening to your testimony that except for the public safety aspect of this, a suspect arrested in the united states would be subject to mirandize under the law. >> yes, once that person has

been presented in the initial appearance. >> there's been considerable discussion about miranda warnings and how it may or may not impact suspects from cooperating with investigators. the reflected just explore that a little bit with you. given a suspect is going to be advised of his rights by court within hours after his or her arrest, the fbi is it correct generally provides money in the warnings itself so that you can take full what vantage of anything he might say in the intervening period and preserve it for an article 3 court coming. many people have contended however that the moment is suspect is provided miranda warnings, he will immediately cease cooperating with you and so i'm asking in your experience is the case that suspects the come on cooperative and invoke

their right to remain silent after being read miranda rights and does that attitude persist? adjust your experience. >> let me divide up into parts if i could. the first part with regard to the policy we need hundreds of artists today across the country. state and local law enforcement make thousands of arrests across the country on a daily basis. it is generally the protocol for ourselves and steve and mobile law enforcement that you provide maria del warning thank you interrogating somebody who is in custody to maximize the opportunity for utilizing what is said by that individual and the case against them in court. turning the second part of that in terms of what one can anticipate it really depends on the case. i think prosecutors and agents and police officers would say

that on many occasions persons who were miranded agreed to cooperate afterwards and reached some understanding whereby they would have to truthfully cooperate and in terms of in order to get some consideration in terms of sentence. there are others who will never cooperate. richard reid is an example of an individual, the eshoo bomber arrested in 2002 never cooperated to this day even given miranda warnings. there are probably others out there who might have cooperated had they not been given a warning so it really depends on the circumstances of the case. >> there's been a lot of discussion about whether abdulmutallab was willing to talk and whether the provision of the miranda warnings prevented you from achieving some form of cooperation from him so let me ask you when the agents spoke to him following his medical procedure was he on

cooperative? >> my understanding is he did not display the same willingness to respond to questions that he had displayed earlier in the day when we first interviewed. >> what about now? is he cooperating with you some time after that post hospitalization or post@@@@@ @ r

authority i do believe that this issue has been litigated and has come up with different results and different circuits to the extent the question is is there any certain authority on that i don't believe there is. >> we have heard in the media and elsewhere that the military should have taken custody of abdulmutallab. that's the contention of there with the implication being that the government would have gotten more out of him if the military had been allowed to handle his

case. not since 1911 has the fbi arrested a suspected terrorist inside the united states and immediately turned the person over to the military? and the past administration and this administration that's true? >> we have not done that. let me put it this way the president has the authority to direct that we have not been directed to do that ourselves. >> have you ever turned such person over to the military leader in the process of such as after the first appearance in court? >> the fbi has not. there's been other occasions where the marshall service upon the direction of the president has i believe turned at least two individuals in the military. >> to you know who those individuals were? >> both of them are directed in military custody for a period of time and return to the article

to record for disposition of other cases. >> and who had the custody of those individuals? >> at the outset we probably did the arrests on both because they went into the article 3 court system and marshal service in cases where the wing through the courts were then transferred to the military for a period of time and then transferred back to the custody of the marshall service. sprick you didn't think the decision? >> no that's the president's dishes in. -- president bush made a decision to transfer those individuals over to the military? for disposition. are those defendants still in military custody? >> one went to trial before an article precourt i believe in florida and was convicted and serving a sentence in the u.s. prison system.

>> said that the then and why is to me that they came back from military custody in to the civilian form. -- yes, sir both of those cases they came back to civilian -- >> how did that happen? >> i believe collection by the president they'd be returned to the custody of the attorney general and that was exercised through the marshall service. i believe he was sentenced, he may still be in jail or be released. i have to check on that. >> was there not an intervening challenge by the defendant's to the military system and the judiciary issued a decision that the transfers about whether the issue contradictory decisions with the transfers are legal and both of the defendants were

moved back into the custody and my question is did the court's direct that they be sent back or did the administration, bush administration send them back before the court determination was made with the where he illegally detained in the military system? >> i have not reviewed the cases recently but i do believe that one circuit ruled against the transfer of the individual into the military system whereas the other circuit upheld the transfer and neither of the cases reached supreme court and both were resolved and articles records before would go to the supreme court. >> faced with that conflicting decision in different circuits the administration pulled them out of military custody and put them back over into the civilian? >> i was not involved in the decision making process but i

can say they did come back -- >> and one civilian was determined the transfer to another tree custody was all full so there was a contradictory -- >> excuse me -- [inaudible conversations] that's right. that's right, sir. i just wanted to make sure i was on solid ground there. >> so there is no clear legal authority to transfer terrorism suspects arrested inside the united states to the military? >> you would have to go to -- constitutional scholars other than myself. >> based on court decisions we have a conflict in the court decisions. >> i think there is a conflict -- but in the cases may have been somewhat different. all i can say is that i'm probably not the person to opine

on what extent it still remains unsettled. >> do you know -- and i probably should know what do you know whether that is that the district court or circuit court level of this case? >> both went to circuit courts. >> so we have a difference of opinion into different circuits. being in the civilian system does not mean an interrogation won't be useful and that is sort of the point of these next lines of questioning i have. so we've established for this purpose that there really aren't any constitutional alternatives the fbi handling these cases directly. let's turn them to the contention that your interrogation of abdulmutallab wasn't necessarily effective. that's an accusation position

taken. some critics have charged that he could have achieved a more effective interrogation if there were better interrogators available. as i say that i have not seen a shred of evidence to substantiate that for my position but just to explore this contention do you believe you have the right mix of agents on the ground for the initial interviews of abdulmutallab? >> if you put this in context in the middle of the day there is an attempt by an individual to blow up the jet as it was coming into detroit. he could have anticipated that and it could have gone to any city in the united states. i believe the special agent in charge and agents on the ground did an admirable job in

identifying persons available to conduct the initial interview. they chose an agent had a substantial turner was experience who served overseas and not certain whether it was iraq or afghanistan and was thoroughly familiar with terrorism issues and they also -- >> both domestically and internationally then. >> yes. and an individual who may not have been a certified bombing technician bup was expert when it comes to explosives because necessity of identifying what explosives were on the plane and what we are dealing with. they did an admirable job pulling the right person to conduct interviews on that day. down the road -- >> excuse me -- no, keep that thought it right there before we get down the road, these individuals who conducted these interrogations' am i accurate in saying that they were members of the fbi's detroit joint

terrorism task force? >> i would have to check on that. it may have been one was but it may have been the bomb technician are and not have been a member of the joint terrorism task force but had the type of expertise they believed was necessary. sprick you may want to clarify that for the record. excuse me, down the road. >> to think one of the benefits of the programs, the high-value interrogation is that you want to pull together persons with a variety of capabilities. you want a strong interrogator and subject matter expert. you want a person knowledgeable of the individual. you may need language experts and thereafter as the process went on increased our numbers of persons with various degrees of

expertise that can contribute to that interrogation but we were dealing with on that day necessity to respond very few among us to get the information we felt was essential and so we could have brought in and half afterwards brought in a greater number of subject matter experts that they were not readily available on the ground at that time. >> the administration established high-value interrogation of the group to interrogate individuals of significant interests to the government overseas is my understanding. why wasn't it deployed to interrogate mr. abdulmutallab instead of your the joint task terrorism agents and do you believe that the agent was effective without the hagan involvement? >> by christmas it hadn't been set up but that did not mean that we wouldn't use the same

concept prior to that time. we've recognized for a period of time and certainly our agents far more expert than i understand by the ability of having any number of areas of expertise to contribute to the success of a particular interrogation. we had five previous fall in individual named david headley where we pulled various subject matter experts and to contribute to that interrogator on that particular day we would have been anticipating down the road we would need to flood into detroit to complement the individuals doing initial interrogation indeed that's what happened. islamic my understanding in your testimony substantiates the proposition that abdulmutallab was interviewed by anybody but

absolutely expert experienced interrogators members of the detroit task force would be unfounded, they were not experienced and cade as i understand might be available for consultation and domestic and let me ask you primarily they are a deployment group for overseas interrogation; is that correct? >> that's correct but that does not preclude them from being used in the united states and the expertise has been and will be used in the united states. 1. i do want to make because i have heard some criticism of the fact that interrogation by fbi agents in detroit. the fact of the matter is our agents are very expert, they go through new agents class. one of the key areas that is covered is interrogation and many agents have come in and spend a great deal of time as police officers.

that's what you do day in and day out. i might also add that we have had some major success, some fairly run around. an individual by the name of george perrault was selected by the military to do the interrogation of saddam hussein so i do have the expertise on the ground that day to a very good job and it would only augment what we do for a number of years. speegap the afghan risk i don't suppose you get on the joint terrorism task force without being seriously experienced. >> generally that is the case. we have a lot of experience on that task force. >> thank you, mr. chairman. my views are as followed. i do want to find out what have we learned? what have we learned to protect the american citizens so that the next time something happens

we are safer. there's been effort by the administration trying to defend themselves and i want to make sure that i don't into any political questions with you and then there's been those on the other side who wanted to perhaps explain that. judge mukasey did a piece where he said he should have been held asn'&.@dn

one of the recommendations i want to make you may have already commented on is the the hagee located at the joint terrorism task force center for that very purpose because they were not involved in based on what he said they were not involved before the decision was made with regard to the miranda rights and so therefore when secretary napolitano testified she said she did not know. i believe admiral blair testified on the senate side. i can still see the hearing. i think the question was asked

by maybe senator mccain. i think senator mccain and he said he did not know. and i think that mike plater said he did not know and i think that it's a great job. more people go to the counterterrorism center and see the number of pieces of information that come in every day and how they have to boil it down. so i think those of us ordered me i'm not speaking for the other side, felt that perhaps if he could have been considered an enemy combatant like mukasey said and had more opportunity there may have been a chance to say did you see this gentleman when you were in yemen? did you ever talk to him? what building were you in? digit river see pictures of these people sent back? are there other american citizens in the class with you? there were a lot of things that could have been asked and so i think the question is what did we learn -- you can spend time

going back either criticizing what took place on christmas day or go back and defend what took place. the administration announced the high-value interrogation unit, they announced it in august, correct? >> i'm not certain of when they first announced. >> this is one of the more significant issues the nation is facing because they are men and women serving in afghanistan and iraq serving as well and some of the people who have done a great job. let's find out what we have learned from that rather than defending or tearing it down. and i will stipulate as well as they vary in may well be they were not the best people we had in the nation at that time to have interrogated the christmas day bomber because they were on vacation. they were having celebrating the birth of christ jesus on

christmas day they may have been at a church service. they may have been somewhere else and that's not bad. it's okay for people to take off and so the point i try to make over at that time because this is such an important issue because the number of people that have died in this country, the number of people that died at fort hood that were impacted, did he have any impact on the major down in fort hood? yes, did he have impact on the army recruiter that was killed? yes. did he have an impact on john walker that may have been responsible for killing more involved in the killing of michael spawned the first cia people from my district? the answer is probably yes and you can go on and on and on. so i think it is what did we learn without being defensive for protective what did we learn to truly make sure the next time and unfortunately there may very well be in next time to make sure we do everything we possibly can. now i've talked to your people and they tell us and i think that you sort of acknowledged

that the hague will be used domestically. it will only be international but that is accurate, it may well be used for this. so i think that's where i go and i read the interview and i read the stories of the phil roe hero. he's a great guy but how long did he have with saddam hussein? >> months. months. >> but he understood the culture. he understood i can still remember the time former congressman and secretary richardson met with saddam hussein when he put his sold and saddam hussein got up and walked out, culturally that wasn't appropriate so to have someone who understood the culture of the language in the point is they were probably very good people but probably people that were better in the country and in order to make sure that america is safe and secure i

think we should do everything we can to reduce bank could i respond if i could for a couple of aspects of that. first with regard to the military commissions and support of military commissions for the trials that judge mukasey argued for i believe the president has the authority at the right to determine where a person is to be tried, whichever. but i do believe -- i believe the most important thing we need to get its intelligence to prevent additional attacks and we want the best possible people during the interrogation as soon as possible. one thing i do think is lost in some of this dialogue is one has to make decisions relatively quickly in order to maximize the opportunity to get that information and intelligence and often the time where the opportunity is greatest is after

the rest and most police officers i think will tell you that is the time you have the greatest opportunity to obtain the information you need. i would have liked to have gotten out to detroit. the plane came around 12:00. abdulmutallab as a hospital, 2:00 and we have a small window of opportunity to interrogate him before he goes under surgical procedures. i could not get an expert on nigeria radicalism to the point, i could not get somebody from our quantico who does this for a living at that point and the individuals they selected -- the selected individuals for the capabilities to those interviews and what is lost i think in the dialogue is the necessity to a certain extent relying on people in the field who were doing this and reacting to a number of stimuli that come through either what is happening at the scene, happening dramatically or right after the scene or the willingness of the person to

talk at that particular time and what i think our people did and it cannot be lost in the future is to keep the opportunity open as long as you can to take advantage of those opportunities when they are presented. >> i agree and i think it is important not to browbeat and go after the people that are. that's not the point. the point is what did we learn by that and i think the article -- i wish i still had it, we will submit it for the record. i think what judge mukasey was asking for that it not be tried in a military tribunal. i think that he felt -- and i could be corrected here -- that he be held as an enemy combatant free period of time that would have given an opportunity for your very best people to have interviewed him and then after that he could have gone to article 3 so i think it is an issue of timeliness and went time. and listen, i have great respect.

the police men and the person at that moment you get these silk stocking lawyers from the big firms to make a value judgment of that man or woman on the street that time has to make a very tough choice and i respect that. what do you think about the idea -- and i sent a letter to the administration. i did not send it to you because on some of these titles and to the bureau because it's a political judgment to a certain extent. but what i did is i talked to john brennan, and i sent a letter to the president's foreign intelligence advisory board to the secateurs, the former senator and also hague to look at the possibility of relocating or locating, not relocating, the hague and counterterrorism center so that they are there at that very moment when something is coming in, and also when you're out there at the center the breaking down of the barrier because they

are in the same cafeteria together, they kind of know each other and relationships develop. what are your thoughts about locating their? >> well i think you are aware of the past discussions. i am a firm supporter of the counterterrorism center. early on we were one of the first occupants. i move to our counterterrorism division from fbi headquarters out there so that we co located with the nctc and other allin elements of the intelligence. why would like to have the hague. we talked about getting space and my understanding from the response of those discussions as they are stuffed to the gills and we couldn't get the space for what we wanted to do. i can tell you we are operating out of their putting together the hague our people are there today but we needed additional space they could not accommodate. ideally it would have been nice but the space we do have which i think you're familiar with also

gives as space to move with. so that was a consideration. i agree ideally i would like them there but they did not have the space. >> okay. they tell me they actually won't get in the current place until august 1st and -- >> i would love to have another building. >> i'm going to continue to push this because i think it is a bigger issue and let me also say i want to go on the record having complimented you and your people i also want to complement michael and the group the counterterrorism center. if everyone who writes a critical argue and makes a comment can go out there and look at the number of things that come in every day and then boiled that down, and i felt there was maybe a political decision made that was wrong but the fault was not out there and if you begin to browbeat people out there you begin to get them

so skittish they are going to make a mistake sometimes, so any way i'm going to continue to push to see if we can have it relocated. the administration has been unwilling to share with congress any details about the nation's new interrogation policy and based on the christmas day bomber case, it looks like there is some confusion out there as to what is the policy, not generally like a newspaper story but what is the real policy? so has a charter or and i know you've been written for the establishment of the hague and if so could the committee see it? >> yes it's been modified to address the issue of use of the hague in the united states is being modified and i believe there's every intent to provide it to congress as it is

finished. smacks of the modification -- de hague will be potentially used. sprick it could be. >> when it's available if you could just -- >> i believe there is the intent to provide it to you. >> if they did when it is domestic as the decision has been made, does hague still adhere to the role of intelligence gathering taking over law enforcement? >> generally i would say yes i think every circumstance is a little bit different but one of the things the hague is to do is put together an interrogation plan that has and what not just from the bureau and others in the law enforcement community but also input from the intelligence community and so the plan would address that particular issue with input from

the various communities. >> the one last question order the fbi requirements associated with the hague and how much are you allocating and fy tan and how much are you requesting an fy 11 and what does the fbi estimates a four year recurring cost of the hague once it is foley stood up? >> we were late in attempting to obtain the funding in the 2011. it will be in the 2012 s to the particular figures i would have to get back to you on that. i will tell you the fbi is footing the bill for the space. we have to get contributions from others and the personnel will be contributions from contributing to the various associated agencies. >> will be that based on the number like this overhead and everything like embassies to abroad will that be a few people you will pay a certain percentage? >> i would like to split up as much as i could. i want to get as much input whether it be from people or

funds from the other agencies but i did not want to hold up the process so i've got the people on the ground, the experts and we are well on our way with the building blocks my hope is i would have contributions from other contributing agencies and then my@@@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tain

people leaving the by understand the national security branch is coming together pretty well and could you explain where you are on that? >> yes. first of all i do think that because you are an fbi agent and well versed in law enforcement techniques that does not mean you can't utilize the skills to develop intelligence and i do believe early on our organization agents, analysts and professional support understood we had to prevent terrorist attacks and that as a result of good intelligence not necessarily putting people in

jail. the caliber and quality of the intelligence analytical corporation has dramatically improved over the last several years. actually harvard law school was during a study that's looked at as under the microscope in terms of an organization going through change and we had a professor go out and visit offices he wanted to go to. he visited two years apart and came back and basically said this is a completely different analytical court than i saw two years ago. i do believe the quality of our products, the ability of a special agent in charge of a division to look what is happening in his or her domain and understand the intelligence threats and than task persons to collect against the gaps we don't have has dramatically improved. the areas which we still need improvement is continue to grow our analytical corporation and the persons that can support

that analytical corporation, data input. the tasks necessary to accumulate the data that can then be analyzed. on the other side of it is the the aggregation and search tools on the i.t. site so those are the areas we still need to drive forward in proving again our -- continuing to improve our analysts capacity with additional personnel as well as additional debate in proved technology. sprick anyone in law enforcement understand sometimes there is turf battles with a federal state or local and one concerned about because i'm on another subcommittee of the appropriations homeland security is the issue of who is in charge and with respect to the fbi and homeland security if i were the president i would have fbi in charge by the way that there have been battles i've been aware of and whatever and these were years ago but i think it's

important you and secretary napolitano focus on where we are and who is in charge of what and not only in the homeland but you're talking cybersecurity as an example. the president give a directive to homeland security they are supposedly involved in .com and .gov. i don't know how they are going to accomplish all of them. there's 22 areas they have to deal with the time focusing more on the issue of terrorism and how you deal with them on that issue and secondly if you could address the cyberattack. we know it is a serious issue. it is a threat to the country and businesses indigent homeland security has a long way to go to develop the programs necessary to deal with this issue. i feel more secure that the nsa who has the military side has the technology to meet to know where it goes but i think

homeland security has a way to go still working together on those issues how are you dealing with napolitano and do you have recommendations on who should be in charge of what or should have certain responsibilities? >> i don't disagree there have been some ambiguity let me say in terms of in certain areas when it comes to terrorism particularly in terms of delivery of information in state and local law enforcement and in the past there have been confusion as to the relationship of the fusion centers which have been established in every state through generally through the governor and the joint terrorism task force is understanding that almost everyone i know defers to the joint terrorism task force is when it comes to action. >> can i stop you right there i think the joint terrorism task force is our best defense right now against terrorism because the strike force concept where in charge, you know you're in

charge but you have discipline from every major agency in the united states there to fight terrorism so i think it is a great program. >> and i believe that is acknowledged. the issues we are working out with dhs and we are doing it jointly is the relationship of the fusion centers to the joint terrorism task forces. no to fusion centers are necessarily the same, they are different. they've been established often for different purposes and different aspects of the local government and our effort is to contribute to the success of the fusion centers and also make certain that fusion center sorkin to be attributing to our success of the joint terrorism task force and we're doing it jointly with dhs. very briefly on the cyber side. our role is investigating cyber attacks, preventing cyberattack and our principal vehicle to do that is the national cyber investigation joint terrorism task force which has the contribution of a number of agencies including nsa to

identify particular threats and investigate the sourcing of those threats to attribute those threats to either a country, individual or group of individuals. that is our role. i think it is clear that we do not have a role in protecting .com, .edu or es. that is the dhs responsibility. but i do believe our role and principal role we should play, and i think we played fairly well, is to bring to the cyber task force are reena what we've learned and utilized in the joint terrorism task force arena. ..

i would call them lone wolves, to any particular segment of any society. many of them, abdul abu mccullough pet one of the best education she can get in the u.k. and came from a wealthy family, so he was not homegrown quite obviously but. >> it is like the woman who was >> the one that was just arrested.

jihad jane. there are a number of ways we do that. we try to pick up on communications whether the internet or otherwise in which a person has gone from the first amendment protected activity to undertaking some attack. we have a number of tripwires whether it be chemical companies weapon shops where we ask people to alert us to persons who may display the characteristics of somebody who may utilize a weapon or explosives to kill others, but it is the most difficult thing we address because you don't have the opportunity to pick up on communications, you don't have the opportunity to pick up persons who might be on the periphery to who this person may have talked and it is the biggest single threat we face in the counter trey-- counterterrorist marina. >> mr. chairman do i have time

left? i want to talk about games domestically. gangs are a serious problem in this country. >> it is also, domestic terrorism arena, and we are still in 1995, mcveigh lieu up the embassy, and that is still the type of domestic terrorist incident that can kill many people that we have to be alert to so it is not just somebody who follows an international terrorist ideology, also somebody who is much more domestically oriented. >> the issue of gangs. gangs is a very serious problem. a lot of times you have children in middle school being recruited to gangs, a lot of reasons for that. their family life is not good in their gang becomes their family. what do you feel is the biggest for gangs. you have the crips, and you have

the ms-13 but it is east coast and west coast in other parts of the country. we have spent so much money on terrorism and we have not spent as much money on drugs and still impact more people in this country and a negative way than terrorism does and it is unfortunate we have not been able to get the resources to drugs we should. that ties into some of the gang issues because a lot of the gangs are dealing with drugs and prostitution on that type of thing. >> we have doubled if not tripled task forces since 2001 which about have in my mind the same types of capabilities the joint terrorism task forces have and gangs have proliferated since the last time we were here. i am not certain the hundreds of thousands of growth but gangs have from proliferated over the last several years. you mentioned ms-13 is still bloody and violent and the other aspect that we have seen is

where gangs used to be fairly localized and then became nationalized and now they are internationalized. some of the-- we have working relationships, close working relationships for instance if you talk about ms-13, we have el salvador, what a mile and mexico because there are substantial components of those gangs operating in this country. we have a task force in el salvador now that focuses on the ms-13 gangs because it is a revolving door between el salvador and the united states. it is true with many other gangs at this point but we have asked and received in the last several years and i believe we have some requests in this budget for additional capabilities when it comes to addressing the gang phenomenon. >> thank you for your testimony. >> mr. serrano. >> thank you mr. chairman. welcome, sir. prior to asking you a couple of

questions i just want to ask you something. does the fbi still continue the practice of ringing new agents to the holocaust museum? >> yes, sir. >> just to have you on the record again because you know i'm a big supporter of that action, can you tell the committee why do you think that is important? >> the worst thing that can happen to a law enforcement or for that matter intelligence agency is to lose the side of the fact that the public has is has given you an immense amount of power to exercise, they give you a badge badge and a gun and you have tremendous power to affect persons lives. it is important that each of our agents and analysts and others understand that power and most particularly that you have an obligation not to abuse that power, and so the trip to the holocaust museum is to impress upon people what can happen when

you lose sight of the authority you have been given and the constraints upon the authority to do good. >> i thank you. i thank you for that statement and i wanted to put you on the record again because i think it is something that is very important and something that i commend you for. in past hearings, i have asked you about. >> let me just check on one thing if i might. i wanted to make certain i was right and they said absolutely. if they discontinued i didn't know about it at no, i have affirmed that. >> i am glad they didn't. in past hearings we have discussed publicly you and i my concern and the concerns of others that the focus on the war on terror which is extremely necessary at the top of our list would take away from the whole issue of the war on white-collar

crimes. and in view of what happened on wall street and in view of what happened to our economy, we know that some people have been convicted and gone to jail, who had certain dealings within our economy, but so-called insiders economy, but so-called insiders @ @ @ @ @ redge, none have beend

i have taken the most serious cases and running with the most serious cases we have set up a number of working groups and task forces around the country to enlist state and local, low support but also to in triaging the cases attempting to get state and local law enforcement to follow up on cases that we don't have the resources to meet and to track those. we would like to be dealing more, but the fact of the matter is there are so many out there that we can't reach all of them. we have been successful in the cases we have rock and we have

brought cases against insiders. we have brought cases against banking executives, securities, firms executives and we have currently, have a number of pending prosecutions of high-profile persons who have abused their trust at the top of various organizations. i would be happy to give you more of a breakdown of the number of indictments and number of persons and what we have done. i cannot tell you that we are able to do all we would want. we do have to triaged yurko but it is much like that which we saw immediately after 2001 and 2002 when we had a serious of corporate cases worldcom, enron where we had a substantial challenge to get through those cases or go the same way we are going through these cases now. >> when you say you wish you could do more is that because there is so much out there that is hard to keep up with all of

that, which is a terrible's ein or is it a shortage of resources? >> it is a shortage of resources. we can use many more forensic accountants. i can use far more accountants who know wall street but the good agents from wall street know wall street. >> i got worried for a minute. >> we do have a number of those who helped to prosecute them because they know the ins and outs. it is always a question of resources and i think we are making a substantial dent in the workload, but yes it is always a question of resources. >> now at the expense of getting the obvious answer which is a great relationship, what is the relation between the bureau and securities and exchange commission for instance in terms of them turning over information to your, or doing some legwork if if you will that may help you? >> the wholesale change, exchange commission and the

individuals have come over to take over the investigative side of the securities and exchange commission are former assistant united states attorneys who have worked well with ef vi over the years with film, both we and the department have a very close relationship. i have not, one area i know we are working closely on and that is making certain that documents that are subpoenaed by one entity go to a database so that if there is authority for the other entity to have those documents you don't have to replicate what has been done by the previous entity. it seems basic and simple but we have been working with them so that there is a common database structure when we pull in documents. we want to ensure that they can be utilized in search, given the appropriate authorizations by the fbi and securities and exchange commission and be ready for the process because that is not always been the case. that is just a small example of

the area we are working on to make certain that we coordinate our civil on their side in our criminal activities. >> thank you. let me take you over to the area of hate crimes. as you know the president has signed new legislation that covers issues that we needed to cover in this area. there is also the concern that many of of the us have about hate crimes directed at immigrants or having to do within the whole image ration issue, and as we get closer, hopefully, to an immigration reform, i think there will be more people acting out their anger and their hate and their differences with the immigration community. also, if this economy doesn't turn around quickly, there will be more feeling somehow that immigrants are causing problems. so, in general the issue of hate crimes, what can you tell me about the involvement of ef vi?

again, is the bureau in the situation where it can't do as much as it would want to for whatever reasons, resources or just focusing in on the war on terror and lastly, what kind of request if any are you getting from the local authorities on issues that they feel they need the fbi involvement? >> we have augmented our agents and our focus on civil rights in general, which hate crimes quite obviously is a strong part. as i believe you are aware we had an initiative looking at the civil rights cases that have been under duress for 40 or 50 years, and that initiative, we have been involved with for about two years and we have had some very successful prosecutions even though 30 or 40 years after the events themselves to place.

but when it comes specifically to hate crimes, we generally backup state and local authorities and want to handle them. if we do not believe they are been handled appropriately we in the u.s. attorney's office will move into make sure they are handled appropriately. it is not an overwhelming workload and we should be available because if we are not available to do that, nobody is. and so, we have not seen i don't believe in uptick in hate crimes although with the new legislation we undoubtedly will see in uptick in the numbers and we all have to address those. the other thing i would say we are pressing on is when it comes to reporting the numbers for the reports that we produce in terms of crime, up and up and down and the like, state and local law enforcement have not been amongst the leaders in terms of

reporting hate crimes, and we continually push state and local law enforcement to record that so that we have some accurate accounting throughout the country as to what is happening with that type of criminal activity and the same way we do with rapes and murders and robberies and burglaries. >> one last point in question. mr. direct or, in the past, at public hearings and in private and over the phone i have discussed with you incidents where i felt that the euro was taking actions that i thought were unfair, instead of happened historically about the treatment of certain communities by df ti in general and for the record, you and i have discussed and agreed has been very helpful for instance in releasing documents about its two years of fbi behavior towards their puerto

rico independence movement and so on. having said that you know i have the great respect for the hero, a great respect for you and i think anyone who is a member of the fbi is a person who should be proud of the work they do. with that in mind i encourage every chance i get people from my community to consider the bureau as a career so i bring you the question of recruitment. how do you recruits these days? where are you recruiting these days? are you recruiting and how do people from communities like mine both the physical community and the racial and f. they community i represent get a shot at joining the bureau? >> everybody has a shot at joining the bureau. i will tell you though that it goes back to what i say about the power that one has when you give them the authority of being a fbi agent, and we generally take persons who have had

another career beforehand. in other words, the most important criteria in our mind is judgment, maturity, and integrity in terms of becoming an fbi agent. consequently we don't do as well as other agencies who recruited out of college and it is for the reason that we believe that the euro is enhanced by having persons with a number of skills. it can be military, it can be policed, it can be a teacher, it can be an accountant, it can be in this day and age someone with languages but generally it will be three or four years out of college before they come to us. we have recruiting drives for particular specialties, but i will tell you i think last year we had something like 17,000 individuals who sought to become special agents, but that does not mean that we want you to in any way reduce your

encouragement, your recruiting a persons from your community. we need the representation -- max b. i can give waivers. >> i am glad you cleared that up about three or four years out of college. the way you were saying it sounded like the euro was going to have a lot of older people for a while and i'm glad you cleared that up. thank you so much mr. director. thank you chairman. >> mr. serrano and then mr. fattah. >> let me first applaud your efforts. i wrote to you about this whole mortgage fraud area over two years ago and the fact that the number of cases are well "quite close to 2000 now" in your written testimony from 2003 is extraordinarily important and i

note the significant arrest in pennsylvania in and around philadelphia and i am very pleased that we have vi has been quite aggressive on this matter. i want to go through a couple of things. one is your long public service from your days in the armed forces. it goes over any number of presidents as best as i can count. ford and reagan and bush one and two and clinton and carter and now president obama so you have served in a variety of capacities. you took this job a few days before 9/11, and since then, that fateful day you were done a great deal to make sure our country can be safe and you should be applauded for that. my question is, given your

entirety of your experience, i know there is probably some di some of these cases now and i just want to go back over some material because they think that you said, and i want to make sure we get it on the record, that there are no arrests in the united states of america that are being handled any differently for suspected terrorists and since 9/11 up until this moment, is that correct? >> with the rest of the united states we have followed the same procedures, yes sir. >> so when that's what is being criticized about this christmas day activity is kind of like somehow we played a weak hand and from my read of this, it is not actually true. what you had is you have a suspect who was injured. that is an explosive went off and he was injured and before he could get medical treatment, surgery, he was questioned to

make sure that there was no other immediate public danger and then he went into surgery. than when he came out of surgery, as many who have been in surgery, he was less responsive, and then after that that., he became more responsive and has been cooperative. am i miss characterizing data in any way? >> no, it is accurate. the only thing i would say is that after he came out of the medical procedures, i am not certain it was surgery but it was certainly medical. >> whatever it was. >> he was suffering burns. he was less responsive that evening then he had been before in terms of answering questions. >> writes right but the notion that somehow he was being coddled just does not square with the facts. >> i had not heard that word. >> there has been a lot of criticism that he has been treated, that we should be so

much more aggressive somehow, like we had been in the past with the shoe bomber but your testimony is this is exactly the same way these matters have been handled. >> i think they have been handled@@@@ry$@ @ @ @ @ '"@ @

testifying. it is really speculative. >> okay. so you can see that, that here too for, all of the cases that have gone on and have been some 300 trials of terrorists in the country, have there have been incidences in which, where those trials were taking place, in which americans have been harmed or has been under some threat? >> not to my knowledge. that is not to say-- as to say under a threat i can speak to that because i'm not familiar

with the circumstance but i am not aware of persons being harmed or any serious threats in the course of one of those trials. >> so, you just had a very significant success today in terms of the mumbai attacks in a trial in which someone was found guilty and the attacks in india, which 136 people lost their lives, right? >> i believe there is an individual who is going to plead guilty either today or tomorrow. >> he pled guilty. today. the point is that, what i am saying is we have gone after drug cartel leaders and we have gone after criminal enterprises in a variety of ways. i want to be clear because there is a lot of political dialogue whether we could put someone on trial in new york city or not. many developing countries, putting someone on trial is a

dangerous thing. it could be a problem but i just thought in the united states of america, that we would not be in a position where we would he fearful of taking someone who had harmed american citizens and put them before the bar of justice. >> i understand your concern congressman. >> thank you very much. >> mr. schiff. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you mr. director for being here. i have two questions, the first is the issue of great concern to jurisdictions around the country dealing with the backlog of dna profiles collected from offenders in. in los angeles lapd in the sheriff's department have backlogs of several thousand sexual assaults kids. in order to close those backlogs, the city and county have often sent their samples outsourced them to private labs. and, that has been helpful, but

there is now a second backlog created because once the samples come back from the private labs, the city and county need to do a technical review of every case to ensure the private lab did the job right. so last year for example with the chairman's help we got half a million dollars from the city of los angeles to get through the back lot. they use that money to contract out, got through the backlog back blogging but now they still haven't uploaded the dakotas because of this technical review requirement. that doesn't make sense to me for a couple of reasons. one, it is expensive, two none of the technical reviews have come up with any errors in terms of private labs that i am aware of and number three you could have 100% requirement of a technical review where there is a match made once it it is uploaded in the dakotas and therefore only when it is actually utilized do you need to go through what looks at

creasing me like a redundant step. so, my question is, is this really necessary? can we really cut down on the backlog at no expense by eliminating this 100% review requirement except in a case where it would actually make a difference? the second question on mentoring. one area we have tried to make her aggressive in dealing with circumstances where sex offenders take advantage of volunteer programs is to have a system of screening volunteers for mentoring programs. congress tried to accomplish that goal first with the national child protection act of 1993 and later with a volunteers for children act. youth serving organizations got access to fbi checks working with their states. still more than two thirds of the states don't have a workable affordable system to screen the people that want to volunteer

with them. in 2000 with three week passed the protect act which was a national pilot allowing serving organizations to conduct national fingerprint-based background checks and the f. the i has run 60,000 checks through the pilot and 60% of those cases turned up a criminal record of serious concern. for example the pilot identified -- under the age of 15 big because they are applying in a different state and national check would have turned up their record. these checks can be conducted for a fee of less than $25. i have introduced legislation in the support of chairman, the child protection improvements act, bipartisan legislation to build off the success of the pilot to put in place a fee supported system to ensure every child serving in an organization has the ability to quickly and cheaply do these checks. senator schumer addressed identical in the senate but the

bill has been stymied in large part because we are were told despite repeated requests to doj and fbi no formal comment has been offered on the bill. said they were reluctant to move the bill without having drg-- doj or fbi way in. we like it, go for it or we don't like it, see it fixed. i wrote to the justice justice department along with senator schumer and congressman rogers and senator hatch asking for the department's views on the bill and we still haven't heard back. if you could get us an answer, let us know whether you supported so we can move forward or a few thing things need to be changed. >> addressing the second question first, i will carry that back to the department of justice and i would say under that particular legislation i understand the import of that legislation and the importance, but i will carry the request

back to the department of justice. >> i think they are going to be principally understand, what is the fbi's view because it implicates the sub10 more than doj. >> if it is a question of additional name checks, we can do that. if it is a question of who pays that is a different question altogether and i don't know the ins and outs of the bill that i would expect some place in their the cost of doing this is a factor in somebody's view. but, we have millions of name checks now through her name check backlog and i can't can imagine that would be a substantial issue for that but i don't know what other issues there might be. in any event i will try to get back to you. on the dna backlog in the dialogue we have had, the ingestion of the samples, addressing first of all your question in terms of their request for quality decontrol reviewed by a separate set of experts before it is put into the dakotas we are looking at that and my expect nations will

be to remove some of those hurdles on in the very near future. i know that has been an issue. it is one we have been looking at and we want to remove the obstacles to the providing of those samples to codas so i think we will be able to get back to you with what we hope will be fixed in that area. more generally i would say the backlog that we have had in terms of ingesting the samples into dna will be reduced to almost nothing by september. we now in and just i think 25 thousand samples a month. now we will go up to 90,000 a month given the resources that are appropriated for us back in 2009. we have now brought those persons on board and we are using, reorienting how we do things and also using robotics

as we have not in the past so by september our hope is there will be no more than a 30 day to lay ingesting any new samples that come in regardless of the amounts that have tripled or quadrupled over the years as i know you understand. >> do you know where the fact log is now? >> i would have to get back to you on that. i have been looking at charts showing bam, like that in september but where we are in march i would have to get back to you on. >> if you would, where we are now compared to a year ago and how fast we are processing compared to a year ago that would eat very helpful and i would like to work with you on a couple of related issues. one is the lack of uniformity in the low side that we look at and those that others in europe and other parts of the world look at in databases who can't talk to each other because of that and i would love to see if we can harmonize what part of the dna strand we look at to compare, as

well as the rest of the issue which the president recently spoke in favor of. we would love to try to advance and finally a couple of controversial issues, but the partial, running partial dna as well as familial dna both of which i supported think make sense and will take people off the street and i think we can have the right safeguards in place, not to violate anyone's privacy. i look forward to working with you on those issues. >> if i might add, if the universe of samples to be ingested in, we also look at what we are going to have to do to ramp up in taking those samples. the other thing i would say in terms of working with europe, one of the biggest concerns we have with europe is their privacy rules that inhibit a dialogue and discussions we have with them in terms of exchanges and the capability of identifying criminals who

populate both our side and the other side. >> if i have time, yes. in the european union, all of the law enforcement agencies have been cooperating one to another in between the various countries on all of this. are you saying that in terms of interacting with us, there is still a ways to go? >> yes, but in terms of the action amongst themselves it is the lowest common denominator and then there is the question of a have different views on privacy than then perhaps we do, and that becomes a problem when the law enforcement elements of both countries want to work things out. and exchange information. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you. it is well established and a sad

fact that the public safety services in indian country are severely lacking, with the result that being a criminal, that the criminal victimization rate on tribal lands is significantly in excess of the national average. i know that you know that and i know the scarce resources you are dealing with as you address that problem. and native american living on reservation lands can expect fewer police officers, longer emergency response time and higher crime rates than the average person living outside of indian country. i no i am not alone in finding these disparities disturbing and unfair and i am pleased to see that this administration and the department of justice department of justice mbf ei are all supplementing their resources,

the increased resources provided by this committee last year to address this problem. i know it is further disturbing fundamentally disturbing, that the victims and the targets of these crimes are predominately women and because of the jurisdictional issues, there are difficult questions, structurally difficult questions going into an investigation and helping to provide law enforcement activities in indian country. but there is also just a fundamental lack of resources too, so can you describe the trends this fbi has seen in the level and types of crimes committed in indian country over some reasonable period of the last five years? >> probably will have to get

back to you with specifics, specific statistics on that. i can do that. i will tell you that i have tried to corral off the resources of the bureau putting into indian country since september 11ãécd$@ @ @ @ @ @ @ h to have the capability in addressing crimes on indian reservations as well as ourselves. it is an issue that we try to

address with resources that have been allocated but it still is not necessarily adequate to the crime we have seen grow over the last several years. >> i commend you for your request for additional resources and i assure you this committee is going to be inclined to be responsive. on a practical level, as i understand it there are over 200 individual reservations, and that you have approximately just over 100 officers to cover those 200 reservations. does that sound right? >> that is correct. that is correct. >> i guess, what can you expect to accomplish when you are spread that then? on the face of it, that is

inadequate. >> what we accomplish as we address the most serious cases with the united states united states attorneys, but our agents work, our stretched, and their caseload is unbelievable. the time they spend away from their families to provide the services to the indian country is truly remarkable but every one of them thinks that they are doing, contributing substantially in the work that they are doing but we are overstretched. others, state and local authorities who may have some concurrent jurisdiction are also overstretched. but we do what we can with the resources that are allocated. the one thing i have made certain is that they have not been reduced even though we have

this first priority in stopping a terrorist attack. >> for the record here or for the written record, how would you compare your law enforcement presence in indian country to your presence and comparably sized rural areas? >> i think it would really be difficult to look at apples and oranges. there are areas in the far west where we have very low coverage but the population is fairly low. i would have to get back to you. >> maybe this would be an even better comparison. how about the areas where crime rates are comparable to those in indian country? in other words, where are the areas with comparable crime rates to crime rates in indian country, and how do you compare your coverage in those areas to indian country? did you follow that? >> yes, sir. >> president obama's budget

request proposes to add 45 new agents to your program. as i understand it, those agents are to be funded out of the hero of indian affairs. why that arrangement? why is that he requested in your budget? >> i would have to get back to you on that, sir. i am not familiar with the intricacy of that arrangement. excuse me just a moment. i would have to get back to you. i do believe that we want to prioritize it but we have the white-collar crime, terrorism and the like and consequently we are looking for support in terms of adding agents for this particular responsibility. we have somewhat the same

understandings when it comes to health care fraud for instance with other departments, hhs. >> transferring the money to pay for the agency? >> yes. >> maybe with health care or maybe with white-collar crime there is spiking in these areas so maybe it makes sense to fund them out of other budgets. it doesn't make sense to me for these agents to be paid for from the bureau of indian affairs because i don't think there is any contention and i am not sure anybody would contend that this is going to go away. i think funding that bureau of indian affairs creates a situation where you are not building your face and those dollars could disappear very easily. different subcommunities have different priorities, and different demands on their dollars. i think we would rather see this funding particularly included in

your day so it becomes a part of your day so that there is a consistency and the a dependability about the availability of the agents increasing that are dedicated to these assignments. >> i will get with the committee on that. >> just to get some other information, highlighting the problems in indian country, fbi request also to add to to frantic to your lan to address evidence processed in indian country cases. to frantic examiners. the budget notes that the 164 day average turnaround for indian country cases this a lengthy that they results are often useless for the purposes of intelligence. it is almost the inaccuracy to the point of not being able to really provide the service in

indian country so we are very pleased to see this requested increase and i think we will be very responsive to it. do you know or give us for the record again how does the turnaround time, 160 ford day average turnaround time for lab case processing compared to the lab wide average turnaround for evidence processing? >> i would have to get back to you on that but also one of the things we had requested is additional examiners but there are other laboratories that are closer to indian country that might provide the same services if they had funding. >> we will certainly look at it from that perspective as well. my understanding that, that the violent crime rate in indian country is about 2.5 times higher than the national average

, and 25% of all violent crimes prosecuted, violent crimes prosecuted by u.s. attorneys occur on indian reservations. 75% of the a fbi's 268 current cases in indian country involve homicides, child abuse as you pointed out, or violent assaults. these are terrible statistics and we appreciate the fact that the administration is focusing on it and we look forward to being responsive on that. mr. serrano asked a number of-- i think it was mr. serrano, about white-collar crime. so we have some questions for the record that we will submit

there to supplement those. one last line of questioning. mr. director i understand the fbi has recently discovered some problems with phase two of the sentinel program that will affect the budget and the schedule for both that phase and perhaps the overall project and that is of course makes everybody nervous because of the experience with sentinel's predecessor. do you quantify-- well, what are the problems, what are the nature of the problems we are experiencing with sentinel? >> let me start by saying that back in-- we sent the requirements from the system back in 2005 and the contract was led in 2006 in the first phase i believe we put in 2007. it is a successful system and that we have a number of agents

who are already using the fields. phase two was to go to the field at the end of 2009, the beginning of 2010 in terms of pilots. we have delayed that in that delay is attributable to basic me three reasons. overate period period of time, both the technology as well as their business practices have changed and the users have looked for additional items in phase two that have not and could not have been anticipated back in 2005. >> added agency requirements? >> not large-scale requirements but minimal requirements but before we push it out of the field we wanted to make certain that we maximize the usability so that it would have a high degree of user acceptance, to the extent that we have had it out in the field that already has high user acceptance. the three issues where first of all, some design changes from

the tip of the users that we have been very reluctant to do that but these make some sense. secondly there are issues related to coatings coding said we needed to address before we send it out and thirdly there are system requirements we want to make absolutely certain that we have in place so that when we rolled it out it would be successful. so the pilots we anticipated rolling out just about now. >> for face to? >> for phase two will be rolled out this summer. that will push off, we expected to have the whole system complete in 2010. it will push the system completion in 22011. back, i can tell you i am the one who made the decision to delay it until we got these issues addressed and i'm comfortable and confident that the system is working. it is a good system and will be beneficial.

>> phase two is a good system and it is working? >> yes, which is completely different from our previous experience that i would not want to replicate in any way in the future. i will also say our contractor, while we have had issues, we want to make certain this works. >> let me ask a question about that. the problems you have described, are they agency problems or are they contractor problems? >> there are problems on both sides which is always the case in something like this. >> how does that impact the case of the award fees and the. >> we are in discussions with the contractor on that right now. we have halted the continue work on faces three and four until we have got those issues resolved. >> what are those issues? >> the three that i described, on the one hand there were certain things that users requested and secondly there were coding issues and earthly we wanted to make certain that

the system when it goes out needs i guess it would be infrastructure requirements. >> do those changes to the contract and the requirements have a budgetary impact? >> they will. what size i cannot tell you what this point. >> it will increase the costs, yes. in looking at it we believe that we can address those costs with what we have in our watch it but again that is something we are discussing. >> do you propose to pay for those increased costs as a result of these problems through a 2011 request? >> we may. we are in the stages of determining exact late. >> we have your 2011 request. is it contained in your. >> no it is not. >> is it possible that you would pay for some or all of those

cost increases through, through what do you call the payments, the fee, report fees for performance? >> yes. it will be give on both sides. >> otherwise he would be looking at a reprogramming? >> i am not certain that vehicle we would use but we have today and will continue to keep you apprised. >> but right now you are holding back at portion of the contractor's fees, perhaps as a means to pay for it to be determined? >> we have stopped to work on phase three and four until we get satisfactory resolution of the issues. another point i might make is our experience in the past as we had one solid contract, week after phase one went into an incremental development where we

decided to develop in basis so we could accept a particular phase before we moved onto the next phase to make sure that meets our expectations. this is exactly why we went to incremental development as opposed to the development process we use before. çmha$cma b! a 'a a have this that is a joke that we are

striking from the record. we are going to subpoena him. no, that is enough. let me ask you a couple of questions because we do have a vote and i will submit, on the gang issue, the committee plussed-up the gang issue. your national intelligence center has determined that gangs are identified as national threats. in 2858 or sense of the local law enforcement agencies reported criminal gangs were active in their church dictations and almost a 30% increase since 2004. the committee included significant increases of 25 million above your request to specifically address this issue. can you tell the committee how many task force exist and how many additional agents in task force will be added as a result of the fy10 increase and is this a top law enforcement priority? >> excuse me just one second.

>> i needed to know the back round from those who are more knowledgeable of the figures. approximately 13 million is going to additional personnel. we do not intend to establish new state street task force but to augment the task force as we are to have turquoise and mentioned before and i can get you statistics, we have doubled if not triple the number of state street task force as we have put up in the last several years. >> but, is the money used in a way, because as you recall there then requests that maybe you use the same approach that we use

use during the 60s with regard to organized crime and this becomes a major effort that you actually have someone in the hero who was focusing like a laser beam because if you live in a neighborhood where you are terrorized by gangs, that is a form of domestic terrorism but the people can't really live. >> we have certainly gang intelligence centers and gang task forces but what we have come to understand is we need fusion centers focusing on particular gangs. we have an ms-13 specific ms-13 task force with persons operating not just at headquarters but in the various communities, yours and los angeles and as i indicated before with associates or i should say adjunct task forces in places like el salvador, so we have focused on gangs in general but we also are pushing to make certain that we focus on particular gangs and take out the leadership and to the extent

possible, remove those gangs from particular neighborhoods. i think we have had some success in neighborhoods in northern virginia for example and the new assistant director in charge has as one of the mandates to work closely with you to address the continuous phenomenon that we see there. >> okay. hopefully we can continue the additional funding. here again if somebody is living in a poor neighborhood and they fear for their family, and i think-- what impact do you see the killings that took place in mexico the other day, that violence spreading across the border? >> we have had pockets of violence spreading across the border. in particular, and when it has come to kidnappings, cross-border kidnappings in san diego, el paso, juarez, san diego, and tijuana and we have task forces to address that.

in this instance that occurred on sunday. actually it was saturday afternoon. it is something we are working closely with our mexican counterparts to identify the persons responsible and assure that they see justice. ice vent and adjuster down to combine the resources not just the fbi but dea, atf and others who wish to participate to address that circumstance. this is the first instance we have seen i believe that individuals associated with the american consulate in juarez attacked in such a brazen manner. >> did the car have a u.s. license plate? >> i am not certain whether it did or not or could. >> the people that were murdered in, was that an american car? >> i would have to get back to you on that even one car there were two individuals murdered and one individual murdered, his

family was in another carpet both of those cars came from the same birthday party on that day. >> i would be interested to know if they were u.s. license plates or texas license plates. there are a number of questions i will ask him that or go the radicalization issue. over the last year or so we have seen a disturbing trend terror attacks planned carried out by individuals including americans who have been radicalized with islamic influence. the fort hood killings, the christmas bombings in jihad jane and a fellow the other day, there've been reports of americans being detained in yemen, pakistan and other countries. does this represent a significant shift in the terrorist threats facing the nation and how is the fbi adjusting to counter these new developments? >> i think those in the intelligence community including ourselves with a there has been a shift in the degree of concern about affiliates of al qaeda

growing in strength and presenting a much enhanced threat to the united states. by that i am talking, certainly before september 11, the federally administered tribal areas, waziristan, western pakistan in the eastern pakistan still present a threat as we saw with najibullah zazi, the individual who went back to new york and anticipated back in september attacking the new york subways. he was recruited and trained in afghanistan, but we also are concerned about yemen, individuals in the last year, year and a half individual lead so who was responsible for the little rock shootings of the military recruiters. ..

in and yemen and want to come back to the united states and undertake terrorist attacks we are attempting to identify those persons and attempting to lighten the five persons radicalized by those overseas never travel overseas and radicalized to the point where they want to undertake terrorist attacks in the united states. >> i went to submit for the record i wonder do you think who is doing a better job with regard to the radicalization issue. does great britain to a better job than we used to? you hear a problem over there but we don't have the problem now. we don't see a g.i. jane from philadelphia. you're from the padilla philadelphia area. we see the five now in alexandria and the major virginia tech graduate born.

are we doing everything we should or maybe there should be a development of a different approach clearly what we used to say is no longer the case because it is a problem. are you thinking deep in so far as how we deal with this from a different way we continue to adjust because maybe we were not doing as well as maybe people said we were in comparison of other countries. >> i do think there are somewhat different problems the u.k. faces where it has communities would that have been alienated and to a certain extent i guess you would say dispossessed and they are focused on the radicalization and many of these communities. we have a diverse community, diverse communities muslims in the united states. and we have -- we are all

immigrants and we have immigrants for any number of african countries, middle eastern countries and the like so there are very few areas you can look at and say okay these are pockets. >> i am an immigrant family, too. one half is green and my grandfather could barely speak english. he was a german in south philadelphia. what i meant is but radicalization g.i. jane was not from yemen. she was from the united states born and raised so that's what i'm talking about from that perspective. you find mobley -- i think he was -- i am talking about radicalization of the domestic population that we hadn't thought of before. you had me confused thinking in an unclean they talk with regard to the pakistan community. i'm talking about domestic recruitment of people born and raised here in the united states that you would normally not think because i looked at the senate foreign relations committee talk about a member of

their blond haired blight moving two yen in radicalized in prison so to think a little bit differently and maybe we don't have enough time, we can talk about it while to open to see if there's other ways to deal with that. >> we've looked at places of radicalization prisons for instance with the federal as well as state and local prison systems and various communities working with leaders outreach in the communities but i will tell you the one that is the most worrisome i think is the internet. everybody will tell you the internet, the influence of the internet, non-justin radicalization but moving from radicalization to organization to undertaking terrorist attacks is the greatest most serious phenomenon that has resulted in many of the cases we've seen in the united states it hasn't been

persons in the communities. it has been the internet. islamic maybe you can have someone come up. maybe we can give you some resources to kind of deal with that. >> thank you. >> thank you. mr. schiff. >> thank you. is there any indication yet in the three that were killed in mexico that came from the same party that they were targeted because they were american or do we know whether it was a case of mistaken identity? >> i think it is too early to reach a conclusion, early in the investigation. i know there's been speculation in the media but i do believe it is too early to reach any compulsion. >> on the broader issue of guns going down in mexico from the united states, i know this is an area where atf has the primary jurisdiction, but what do the agents tell you about the willingness of attorneys to prosecute these cases, even cases that may involve straw

purchasers are low on the hierarchy but nonetheless might lead to prosecution of those engaged in the larger gun trafficking? >> i have not heard the attitude of u.s. attorneys periodically i hear the judges were just assuming not to the gun cases in federal court but that's the way some time effectively been in federal court but that is what i picked up. i am going to meet with u.s. attorneys next week with something i will mention, try to remember to mention to them that i have not heard one way or another. >> please let us know if they need the resources to do it or if they need encouragement to do that. >> i can tell you the needed the resources. >> i'm sure that's right. very quickly and you may need to get back to me in writing on this, in my lifetime as u.s.

attorney i've prosecuted the case so i fall with great interest and hansen case and now the inspector general didn't follow-up report on some recommendations made after hanson about changes the fbi could make to improve its ability to ferret out, people who were attacking the fpi from the inside and the recent fall op assessment found that there were several important recommendations that had not yet been implemented including establishment of a new unit detailed or dedicated exclusively to internal penetration. there was the need to have a need to know systems' computers which were probably set back by the virtual case file systems internal problems. but also one of the concerns was hanson's ability to walk out of the headquarters of these classified documents undetected

and the ig also found the fbi informed information insurance program didn't address the key concern. can you respond back to us in writing and let us know where fpi is? >> i think that was 2-years-old. i may be wrong, but i know for instance we head that unit in place for a number of time and we have addressed the other concerns but overall in terms of the recommendations and the wake of hanson we've adopted i would say 90, 95% of them. these are several and very few given the over all suggestions made that we had to close up but i do believe they've been closed. we will get back to you on that. >> thank you. >> director, think you for your testimony here today and for yo service to the country and the service of all of your employees of the fbi. we will have some questions for the record and i know you will respond to them.

[inaudible conversations] ied

initiatives. we welcome our witnesses for today. representing the army to discuss army force protection systems or major general thomas spoehr director of or me g8 come brigadier general peter fullers programs exit at officers salter commanding general. representing the marine corps force protection and the mrap joint vehicle pergamus brigadier general michael brogan commander marine corps systems command and program executive officer from the mrap joint program office.

representing the joint ied d.c. organization is the new director of michael oates. representing the government accountability office knees davi d'agostino, director defense capabilities of managed she appears to discuss the latest report on intelligence surveillance reconnaissance issues based on business to iraq and afghanistan prepared for the house armed services committee. today's joint hearing continues the committee's ongoing oversight activities with the full spectrum of the protection matters and iraq and afghanistan. i will ask activity regarding the protection was a classified briefing in december of 2009. we meet today to receive updates on these critical life-saving programs and to provide an opportunity for the families fighting men and women to here with the army or marine corps and the dod leadership are doing to protect loved ones against the threats of the soldiers and

marines. today's hearing is expected to cover and provide updates on a wide range of programs to include resistance of family vehicles to include the lighter and smaller mrap alterman vehicle and individual equipment such as lightweight body armor, the new battle dress uniform, equipment used to detect snipers on country radio control ied electronic warfare, the continued challenge of getting adequate intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assets and improvements in weapons and tactics for operational forces. at this time last year the mrap altering vehicle was still under source selection. no vehicles had been produced beyond small numbers of test assets and no vehicles had been fielded to afghanistan. in just one year over 4,780 fees have been produced and over 1400 have been delivered to afghanistan. over 900 have been fielded into operational units. the correct producers averaging 1,000 vehicles per month.

what publicly thank general brogan and his team for the service they provided the nation and spearheading the mrap and effort. it is publicly mentioned before i don't see the suburban and acquisition program in the history of the nation this field as fast and with such immediate and dramatic results. the team's efforts have saved lives, general and i want to thank you on behalf of the american people. there are young people out today because of what you have done, what you and your team have done. there's still major challenges ahead for us with respect to long-term sustainment of the vehicles both in the field coming here and overseas as well as improving these vehicles through the capability. i'm aware of the mrap program office is current pursuing several capability assertions and vehicle modifications to include installing the independent suspensions on legacy vehicles, have your more capable door hinges on the and eight tds and i expect to receive updates on these today.

a critical component force protection is adequate training. that means having ability to train on the equipment the warfighter will use in combat range of individual equipment to our word vehicles. for example of the accidents involved in mrap since november, 2007 have been rollovers. i realize some of these soldiers retreated to the poor roads and infrastructure by do believe some of the rollovers i have been prevented through better training. general brogan, you stated in formal response to the subcommittees, and i am quoting, the better training of the trigger the less likely they are to conduct maneuver that will cells in the vehicle. understand one of the lessons learned from the original legacy mrap program was to concurrently field vehicles to address operational and training requirements and that we are applying the lesson in the program. i'm still concerned over the limited number of legacy mrap vehicles available to the army for training and hope to gain a better understanding of the

army's plan for addressing the vehicle shortfalls. clearly be in atv is a good story and demonstrates we are capable of applying lessons learned. however we cannot become complacent. in the last year afghanistan experienced a near doubling ied vince and u.s. casualties continue to increase. general oates in your testimony you stand and i'm quoting the past three years of afghanistan the casualty rates for the war fighters of increased buy roughly 50%. this concerns me. i look forward to hearing from you on our organization as addressing the strength. before going to the witnessing opening remarks about like to recognize my friend -- [inaudible conversations] >> okey i would be recognizing my friend from washington state, i will however recognize my ranking member friend from missouri, mr. aiken for any comments you may have. >> thank you come mr. chairman and for scheduling this important hearing today. because you have hit a lot of

the highlights i'm going to be brief and would also like to thank the gao and army witnesses for being here today and of course general brogan, you are no stranger to this committee and we are delighted to have you back. thank you for being here and also general oates i believe this is your first time testifying in front of this committee. welcome. this is an important subject. the testimony you're about to provide will assist us in how we are to proceed with in fighting the necessary congressional oversight of these programs and again i want to thank all of you for the service to the country and for being here and thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. aiken. we now recognize the ranking member of the air and land committee the honorable roscoe bartlett. >> i will be brief so that we can get to the testimony and questions. thank you for the service to the country and for being here today and i look forward to your testimony. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. the chair now recognizes the new chairman of the air land

committee diaz i apologize for running a little bit behind schedule. welcome to you all. if there is no objection i ask my full statement be included in the record and i will follow mr. ward -- mr. bartlett and i will last question to the appropriate time and i appreciate very important issues we are here to discuss the issues and what you're doing on them and with that i yield back. >> thank you. without objection of the one is prepared testimony will be included in the record. general oates, thank you for your service and taking the time to be with us today. please proceed with your remarks. >> thinks mr. chairman. i appreciate the opportunity to be here today and testify. the ied remains the greatest threat to the life and limb of the forces in iraq and afghanistan to include the civilian employees that are present, and so the protection of those forces is a priority for the organization on the amount of lead the joint ied

organization and have provided written statements and i will stand by and by an anxious to answer questions. thank you. >> [inaudible] >> chairman taylor, chairman smith, ranking member aiken, ranking member bartlett and others distinguished members of the committee on behalf of the army, brigadier general fuller and i are here to provide updates on army protection efforts. let me preface my remarks by thanking the members of both committees for their leadership and continued support of the army. we share a common purpose and commitment to developing the field this equipment available to our soldiers, armed civilians and contractors serving operation in during freedom and iraqi freedom. the brave men and women serving today represent the best of our society and they continue to perform like this is simply against a determined enemy and a complex and dangerous operational environment.

after more than eight years of continuous combat, we recognize the importance of keeping our deployed forces at the highest level of readiness and providing them the capabilities available. protection of our soldiers and critical war fighting assets remains the army's highest priority. in response to the continued threat of improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers other nontraditional threats as was the more conventional threats such as small arms fire the army has pursued numerous initiatives to enhance the ability and velte and survivability of our soldiers and formations of which they served. these initiatives are captured in complementary and reenforcing layers of protection which it would continue as improvements to individual soldier protection, new and enhanced or more and we'll tracked vehicles, new active and passive this defensive capabilities improved battlefield situational awareness with better intelligence, surveillance and

reconnaissance platforms as well as advances in biometrics and robotics. in addition the army has taken steps to light in the load by fielding play carriers, lightweight machine guns and tripods. while we have made significant improvements in our force páoá'9@ @ rbrb)@ @ @ @ @ @ rb ongoing. we always mindful the soldiers in the field are the ones that

bear the burden of battle. the army remains fully committed to provide an unwavering support for our soldiers by giving them the best protective equipment and capabilities available to successfully confront current and emerging threats. again, thank you for this opportunity to testify before the subcommittee today. on this important issue. thank you for door steadfast support of the american soldier, general fuller and i look forward to answering any questions you may have. thank you. >> the chair thinks the gentleman. and now recognizes general fuller. thank you. i have no prepared remarks. i'm prepared to answer any questions you may have. >> i hope you guys don't think you're getting off this light. [laughter] the chair now recognizes a true -- you were all true american heroes but another true american hero general brogan. >> german taylor, ranking members, distinguished members

of the said committee, thank you for the opportunity to be with you this afternoon. and to answer questions, and marine corps force protection programs and the joint mine resistance hamlisch projected field program. i appreciate, sir, you're going to enter the statement for the record. your support these last many years and providing necessary funding to equip our marines and the joint force to meet the challenges of regular warfare has been tremendous. we work together on a daily basis with our counterparts in the various sprick and executive offices in the army to field just this type of equipment. throughout this conflict, we have fielded numerous generations of gear and had the opportunity to improve its. that goes for individual body armor plates from the small arms protective to the enhanced small arms protected insert and the

side plates. in a flame resistant gear from the suits normally worn by combat vehicle crewmen to now having fire retardant uniforms that include antimicrobial, antibacterial, antivictor properties i very much appreciate your kind remarks regarding the mrap program that serves states is a team sport. the leadership of the, providing funding with the support of secretary defense, the services, the defense agencies and our industrial partners at all levels, prime colacello -- southcom of vendor and supplier has made it possible and we've been able to field these vehicles and have market impact on the survivable of our joint fighters. i would only ask that we recognize this is an open

hearing and the topic is very important some of the matters in the force protection would go into classified areas we don't want to approach that and we also served to be closer, would like to discuss specific to please and limitations of the equipment in an open session. this nation has fielded the best equipped best protected force in history largely due to the support of the congress. finally, on a personal note this is likely my last appearance in front of these committees and as the commander of marine corps systems command i very much appreciate the access you provide me and the patient to have afforded me and i look forward to your questions. >> the chair thinks the gentleman and recognizes ms. davi d'agostino. i hope that is correct. speaking to the great job. chairman taylor, chairman of that, members of the subcommittees, thank you for having me to discuss the gao january 2010 report on the dod intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance of ksr processing

exploitation and dissemination or sharing capabilities. there's been a dramatic increase as you know in the demand for the systems to collect intelligence in iraq and afghanistan to the point where the dod now has more than 6800 unmanned aircraft systems alone. diyala ksr is also seen as the first line of defense for the u.s. and allied forces against insurgent attacks and roadside bombs. but to be useful to the war fighter after intelligence is collected, it must be analyzed and shared with all of those who need it in a timely manner. the presentation board beside me shows the intelligence data processing cycle and you should have a sheet in your briefing book that shows that, too, a close. this processing cycle is commonly described in five interconnected phases at the front and you have first

planning and direction and second collection. at the back end, you have third processing and exploitation, fourth dissemination, and fifth evaluation and feedback. my testimony today focuses on phases three and four of the cycle or the back end of the cycle that transforms the collected data into usable intelligence for the force. today i will discuss first the challenges the dod faces and processing exploiting and disseminating the information collected by the is our systems and the extent to which the dod has developed the capability needed to share the information. we've reported on the dod challenges with isr integration requirements and tasking of collection assets. for this report we spent 16 months obtaining and analyzing documentation from undersecretary defense for intelligence all four military

services, the is our task force, joint forces command, central command, the national security agency and the national geospatial intelligence agency. we also traveled to several locations in iraq and the united states to observe the processing of isr data first hand. we found the military services and defense agencies face longstanding challenges with processing, exploiting it is amending the data they collect. first dramatic increase in collection has not been accompanied by an increase in processing capabilities. of these capabilities are now overwhelmed. as the general of the air force on es are chief recently stated in the not too distant future the department will be swimming in sensors and it needs to ensure that we don't end up drowning in data. sycophant transmitting the isr data requires high-capacity bandwidth for communications which can be extremely limited in theater.

third, analysts shortages including linguists hamper the dod ability to exploit all of the isr information being collected. forcible, central command officials told us the exploit less than one-half of the signals intercept collected from the predator. the dod has become some initiatives to try to deal with these issues but it's too soon to tell whether or not the efforts will result in a measurable improvement. the dod is also trying to improve the sharing of intelligence information through a family of interoperable systems called the distributed ground system or the d.c. gse. the dod has directed the services to the transition to d.c. gse but each service is a different stage in doing so. further, to facilitate the sharing of the isr data on the system dod developed common information standards and protocols. a key problem for all of this is that the legacy isr systems, the

older systems do not automatically tag data for sharing with certain key information like location and time and the services are also not prioritizing the data that should be tagged. the services expressed concern to us that the dod has not developed overarching guidance or a concept of operations that provides them needed direction and priorities for sharing intelligence information. as a result we've recommended in the reports that the dod develop such guidance and that the services and develop plans with time lines and prioritize and identify the types of isr data they will share consistent with overarching guidance. dod agreed with our recommendations and while my testimony has been focused on the back end of the intelligence cycle, our prior work for this committee has shown there are also problems on the front end. and theater collection task kings are fragmented and visibility and how the isr

systems are being used both within and across domains is lacking. and all of these challenges combined to increase the risk that the operational commanders on the ground may not be receiving mission critical isr information which can also create the perception that additional collection assets are needed to fill the gaps. mr. chairman, members of the subcommittee this concludes my summary. i would be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> the chair thinks the gentleman and recognizes the chairman of the arab lands subcommittee mr. smith. -- before, mr. chairman. general oates, i will start with you on the jieddo process and this initial the canada and the response to the problems we had in iraq. it was multifaceted and an evolving a threat in iraq and now afghanistan as well and jieddo stood up to try to grab every corner of that and do everything we could to respond and there are many different pieces of it. there have been some concerns on

behalf of the committee and others about the way the money has come together, how well organized and well structure jieddo ase because there's a bunch of different ideas floating around out there so everything from individuals certainly body protection for the troops it's the vehicles they are in, other countermeasures that we have employed and i think there has been some concerns in terms of keeping track of the money and whether or not it is being spent and organized a and i know that you have made statements that is a priority of yours and to make sure that you get better organized and structured. just wondered if you could take a moment to sort of walk us through how that is improved and improve our confidence that the money and the resources are going to the absolute best use in terms of defeating the threat. >> thank you, congressman. it is an interest of mine into the areas. one is full accountability. i do know that we are the stewards of the government money and i want to make sure that that is not opaque to any one

especially the congress read the second is transparency with our other parts buyers. they want to include the services, the of their combat commanders as well. let me first start at the process. there are a great number of good ideas. those are generally sheltered by the combatant commander and as you know comes forward with a joint urgent operational need statement and that is the screen by the combatant commander and joint chiefs of staff and not all of those come to jieddo. we are generally the first stop if it is a largely on eda related issue or there is a requirement to respond quickly. so, and our budgeting we actually set aside about 20% of our budget every year for that emerging enemy technique or capability gap it appears we did donner anticipate. i received my prairies from the

secretary of defense and he has just shifted mind recently on becoming the director of afghanistan surge so we have appropriately signed our funding towards meeting the capability caps the task of a central command. >> how do you measure the effectiveness of what you do? and it's hard i know because we are certainly not going to stop the threat no matter how we do it but how do you measure with or not a given idea and give an amount of money spent on that idea worked or didn't? >> let me take that in just a second. i want to conclude by reminding you that we do provide monthly reports if not more frequent to the oversight committees to ensure there is absolute transparency of the money and i'm very confident that we can account for. this is a very difficult challenge to stop pushing measures of addictiveness against dollars spent in this particular round so there are some objective tenants we use we

actually look at the total number of ied. those are effective have many and what type of ied vendors a result in casualty were killed and we can draw some analogies to money we were the force protection and how much more energy is required by the enemy to inflicted casualties for instance in the area of training we rely on our troop commanders and small concession officers in particular to inform us about what training is required and what might be effective and most recently in my short time as the director i had a chance to see some of what he would call good ideas, developmental ideas and simulator training which we know intuitively from having been in the fight now for a number of years will bring dividends and save our soldiers and deny the enemy access to the soldiers but this is a major challenge trying to establish concrete objectives

measures of effectiveness against the money that is spent. ..@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ >> thank you mr. smith smith and just for everyone's information,

we made the decision for chairman smith in the two ranking members we won't have a five-minute rule but i would remind you that we are expected to have vote sometime around three tonko 15. mr. i can. >> thank you mr. chairman. first of all, general oates my understanding is there were some people that were critical about resources and what we were doing with your organization. you have had a chance as i understand it to read over that. you have been a user of the services and now you are charged with providing the same services you are using in the past. are there some structural things you have wanted to change about how you approach the problem or is it just kind of an ongoing management situation or what has been your perspective, moving from user to first in charge? >> thank yous there. i have been a customer of jieddo for six years. over three tours in iraq i didn't always know where the

capability and benefits were coming from. i have a clear vision about now. and i would like to take this opportunity to tank of the congress for what it has done for my soldiers both in the 100 hurston tenth mountain division. from my perspective, the director of jieddo munn of my key concerns is ensuring that we provide good response to congress about these particular lines of operation whether they are adequately funded, whether we need to make any changes, defeating the device largely focused on technology developments and detect, attacking the network is an area that really is difficult to establish measures of effectiveness going back to the chairman's question, and training the force which in my experience has been the greatest return on investment and an area where as the chairman alluded to earlier with the mrap providing quality training for soldiers in all three of those domains, defeating the device, attacking the network and impact training

in this environment will return great dividends. i am not prepared at this point to give you a very specific answer on whether adjustments need to be made or adequately funded at this point sir. the funding is provided by congress and allowing us to make meet these very urgent capability gap requirements that have come out of afghanistan and we believe we can handle them at this point. >> thank you, and then the second question over to the loop, the intelligence data processing cycle and being able to process, we are picking up so many sensors are so good. how would you, have you seen an approach as to what has to be done to process the data or do you have any suggestions along that line, or what is our plan to be able to process as well as to collect? >> yes, one of the challenges i think they have had is the

problem of tagging this data automatically. if it does not automatically tagged either on board the system or at the ground station, it has to be done somehow, maybe by hand or by some kind of adapter or with a computer, so it would take time away from the soldiers main mission, so it creates a difficult problem and if it is not tagged, then it is not discoverable by other people even if it is put up onto a d. six. it is not discoverable without being tagged so i think that is probably the most pivotal problem that they face an eating able to share. >> i don't understand a word you just said. what do you mean tagged and discoverable? those are not my normal vocabulary.

>> it is like when you take a picture with your digital camera. it has a date on it and when you load it onto your computer you can find your digital photos by date. if it doesn't have any tag on it there is no way to find it for you. so, this is part of the problem. >> so it is a classification, how to identify classification? >> it is like giving it a name. without the name there is no way for somebody to discover it, and then use it. >> how do we name it didn't? >> there are requirements that the data be tagged but the problem is some of the older systems did not have the capability to automatically to that, and therefore, some unknown amount of the data that we are collecting right now in theater cannot he shared in its form that it comes off the

platform,. >> i would think you would want a date in a location wouldn't you? wouldn't those be the two main things you are looking for? you want to run the time two days backwards. >> bearer standards and protocols and also rules that have been made about the kind of tagged data that you put on when you tag it. general rogan is going yes, yes. but it is important to get that on to the data so that other people can find it and use it and benefit from it. >> so it is a classification kind of thing. general brogan do you want to comment? >> it is not really classification in the sense of confidential top-secret but more identification by date, time and implications sir. >> that allows you you then if something occurs you can go back and take a look at what you might've seen, license plates?

>> particularly if you are looking at the same area in multiple scans you can look for differences, where there disturbances that were not there previously to help identify the locations of ied's. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> we now recognize the ranking member of air land, mr. bartlett. >> thank you are a much. i have two questions. the first is for general fuller -- brogan in the second is for general fuller. i continue to be concerned about the short-term and long-term effects under soldiers and marines in regards to the total weight of the equipment they are carrying in afghanistan. as you know, in vietnam the average weight was 30 to 40 pounds and today there carrying nine steep to 100 pounds and sometimes more than that. i understand we have modular design that can help with this

issue and certainly every pound we can reduce counts, but in the mid-to long-term what are we doing to incentivize interest? for example what would it take assuming a level of protection to reduce the body armor by say 50% in less than five years? that we even asked industry something along these lines? general fuller as you know the army and department of defense have recently started a new round of audie armor testing to help establish a standard testing protocol with a specific focus on statistical analysis and statistical confidence levels. we briefly discussed this at my office a couple of weeks ago. can you explain this testing, give us an update on the progress of the testing and explain what you hope to achieve? thank you. >> sir, you are absolutely right. the way to significant but the long-term impact is currently unknown. we have not seen a marked increase in injuries to our

marines during training or during our combat operations but we don't know the long-term impact. in answer to your question, we do communicate with industry in a number of forum. in all of my public comments, every two years we hold it advance planning brief for industry where all of those who do business with the united states murray in court and academia as well as government labs are there and we lay out for them what our priorities are under commandant and the commanding general of the marine corps development command have indicated reducing the weight is important. i believe the most significant thing we need those there is a materials breakthrough. we have nothing better than the ceramic plates we are currently using with the intended weight that goes with them. we need a materials science advance and to that end, the commandant commandant and his guidance for the planning of

palm 12 has directed our smt funding defense. if we have those to pay corporately throughout the institution we are not permitted to reach into those scientific knowledge accounts to get the money. much of that money is not run by my command. it is handled by the office of naval research and the research laboratory in marine core war fighting web but that is an area where we could certainly use some help from our industrial partners. >> we were advocating as you know for a specific line for r&d for this. we believe the potential for reducing this weight is there if industry is sufficiently incentivized and we believe including the acquisition of this in the research along with underwear and the uniforms and helmets and so forth is probably not the best way to get the best technology out there. general fuller, my first question. >> yes, sir. as general brogan said wade is a concern we have with their

soldiers and we try not to treat them like they are a christmas tree and we just hang things on them. body armor is one of those elements that we are putting on our soldiers. we have lightened the load when we feel that the-- and as general brogan said not only are we trying to lighten the load but redistributing how the weight was mourned by the soldiers so it is now coming off their shoulders down to their hips where you can distribute and carry that weight better. we have also looked on the soft body armor site a new play carrier which we are fielding into afghanistan. between an improved tactical vest in our plague carriers eight-pound. that a pounds is what our soldiers are looking for. in terms of the hard party armor, as general brogan said we really need it l. a g.. we are just tweaking the edges of that technology to refine it to try to lighten some of that weight but until we have that new breakthrough in science and

tech elegy i don't believe our r&d efforts or even the independent research and development efforts of our contractors is going to give us the breakthrough we need to get that weight off of our soldiers. you heard general spoehr talk about providing our soldiers with improved lethality and that lethality is now lighter. you want to give them the total package, the survive apology and also their operating environment. when we talk, you ask the question specific to what what we call her our phase two testing. server as you are or where congress directed we conduct testing on our enhanced protective inserts and are next-generation that of our protective inserts. we conducted that testing with gao oversight in d.o.t. oversight and when we completed that testing we realized we have been working, our testing protocol has been one of overmatch.

we take our products and we test them to around faster than any round in the battlefield and we realize what we are doing is taking the ability but we don't have the statistical confidence that we have the best body armor. we know it is the best because of what we hear from our soldiers and from the testing. we are transitioning from overmatch to a statistical confidence basis. i am pleased to report we have conducted one face of that testing where we have taken place from our soldiers downrange wearing them, to the mouth and took them off their backs and brought them back and shot at those plates with real threat rounds at a high statistical confidence interval and we had outstanding performance with those plates. we are taking another set of plates, doing the same thing. these are going to be brand-new coming off our production line so what we are doing is i tell everybody we ours wrapping up our game. we have always had quality product that we are not going from bad to good.

we are going from good to great and we want to ensure the american public and congress that we have the best body army and now we are doing it through very through a statistical method so you can demonstrate with high confidence that it is a quality product. >> mr. chairman i would like to record to show and i would like our witnesses to confirm this. there've been questions about specific article in the testing procedures. my understanding is that none of that has in any way permitted any defect if armor to get out to the troops. that d's were some protocol differences that did not in any way impact the quality of the armor that our young men and women to wear. dxf b. is not yet feel that? it is they are to be used if needed? ps there. the product is currently listed debts contingency stocks.

it is available if the threat materializes in the theater and we are watching through different intelligence sources very carefully if that threat materializes and it has not. it is a heavier play. the reason we are not fielding it now, the threat is not there and we don't want the soldiers to bear the weight of a half women.

thank you mr. chairman. >> the chair rep nice as the chairman of the readiness committee. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you for joining us today and for your service. i know you were touching on the testing of the technical best, but we are buying from two different sources. am i correct? >> two different sources you mean between the marine corps and the army, sir? the right. >> view we have the same products or. >> the same products but--. >> different colors just like we have different color uniforms. there are two components, the soft body armor, the same ballistic packages inside, different color and how we might attach them. on the hard place to army figures the hard binary plates for all the services of the marines are getting the exact same place that the army or the air force or the navy is getting. we have currently, we have three vendors building plates and the

army is no longer in the procurement business for plates. we have transitioned that over to the l.a., defense logistics agency and they are procuring it for sustainment of all services. >> the prices are the same for the two different services? >> for the hard plates, yes sir because it comes off of our contract and they just buy the same thing. >> i spent some time last year visiting with the troops who were getting ready to deploy in one of the things the army was very concerned with was the color of the camouflage uniforms that they wear. they would much rather have what the marines have. are you gentlemen sharing information with one another just be what would be the best uniform, not to train but to go? both marines and army are being shot at. have you decided on the army at

least, on the uniform or are you going to continue to have the same camouflage uniform that you are utilizing today? >> the first part i would like to answer. the marines in the army, general brogan and myself were closely together. or teams are working closely on sharing information as to what we are working on. is a matter of fact the marines were in our office looking at new capabilities in inquiring as to what we are doing and how we are doing it. we are doing the same thing with special operations command so the three commands generating new capability all the time, we are sharing all that data. specific to the uniform the army has made a decision based on a new methodology that we are sharing with marines and other services that we believe we need a different uniform for afghanistan specifically and we are in the process of generating the uniform. we are calling it the multicam u-uniform and when you talk about our her uniform of our uniform i consider to be two parts.

one is the chassis, how it is designed, how we where things such as velcro and the other is the color. when we feel this new uniform to our troops not only are we going to change the chassis. we are constantly getting input from the soldiers understanding where the challenges with their uniforms are we are making chassis changes and making a color change specific to afghanistan and that is going to be the multicam uniform starting in july, sir. we did consider in that process the marine corps uniforms and actually we had 57 different uniform options we considered and where we see the army operating in afghanistan we believe this uniform would work the best in all of the environments in afghanistan. >> how soon before you get them? >> we will start seeing the first uniforms available in the july time period and start fielding them to the units deploying in august, the major brigades going in august and we are working carefully with the theater to provide the same

capability to soldiers in the theater that we are working through with the theater to ensure we don't fill up their lines of communications with the uniforms when they are also supporting a surge of troops, so we are working on this whole effort real-time, sir. >> one of the things they were concerned with was the issues were not sufficient because they wore out quicker and then if they needed another set, they had to pay for them. are you aware of that? >> server i am aware of that and as a matter of fact i received your letter concerning that. two items, the uniforms we issue our soldiers use used in a combat zone are fire resistant uniforms. they don't wear the same as our regular uniform. they look exactly the same as far as the chassis and color but they are different material. they wear differently. what we do is provide our soldiers with for uniforms before they deploy them as they were out those uniforms they can

go into the supply system and get reissued uniforms and theater so the soldiers do not have to pay for uniforms when they are in the theater if they tear them or rip them or whatever they may do to them. >> i am glad to hear this because it was one of the main concerns when i spent time with them. thank you mr. chairman. >> i would add the fire existing uniforms organizational equipment is issued to the marines and theater and then they wear it out and they do not have to buy that uniform. they do not wear the flame resistant uniforms when they are back at home stationed in garrison. >> thank you so much. >> the chair rep nice as the gentleman from california for five minutes. speech on summon thank you for for your service. the first thing general fuller i want to make you aware of something. do you know what the counter bomber is? the ecp device called the counter bomber? >> not directly.

>> the marines are using it right now. the air force is using it or go the army has 12 here in a warehouse that it has yet to deploy. senator brogan do you know what i'm talking about? >> i am familiar with it and i will tell you it has met with mixed results from user in theater and they are dissatisfied with its performance. too many false alarms so. >> is it better than nothing? >> at may or may not be. best handle probably off-line sir. >> gotcha. the only reason i bring this up is because it is a great device or a bad one and the army has 12 sitting back here, so they are in a warehouse and this goes along with other things, where there are situations where we have stuff in the army buys it in different services by it. it could be anybody in benefits here as opposed to being deployed. there is no plan or where they want to put them so they are just sitting here.

it is one of those things that has been fast tracked. it has been purchased, fast-track tested and sitting in a warehouse. just so you know there are 12 and eight u.s. warehouse that haven't been deployed yet and if the army is going to use them at all or try to upgrade them or whatever so that is the first thing. second, i want to get onto one more thing to touch base with you. as everybody looks at a new car to replace the upper receiver or do something with it if we need anything done with it, if it is done we do want to upgrade it, right now there are only three competitors in our small-arms industrial base that are listed that can, that are viable options to make the new car. one makes the 50 caliber machine gun so they are out and the other two are the ones that make them for now in a foreign company.

a belgian company, so my question is, the secretary of defense has the ability right now to wave this rule and bring other companies and like the three or four other american small-arms manufacturers that we have into this competition in my question is have you encourage them to do so or will you? >> sir i understand what you are talking about. when we look at the improved car competition that will be upcoming and improving our m4, we are looking at ensuring we have a full and open competition, meaning all vendors can come forward. recognizing the current language preclude potential full and open, we are working through that process right now. i cannot say that we have-- we haven't asked the secretary of defense for a waiver of this time but we are considering that process and how we are going to do that. >> my last question is for general oates.

something we don't talk about too often, we talk about ied's. i was able to talk with dr. ash carter in general paxton. it is a party of two and they were talking about they are able to keep more mraps and do some things to bring people's different lanes together and get them is going over faster and they have secretary gates here all the time. buyouts for something yesterday that they didn't have an answer and i asked general petraeus this morning who didn't have an answer and it is this. do we own and any road in afghanistan? do we own 20 kilometers? do we own five kilometers? can we say we have persistent coverage of any road at all, and a certain amount where we have isr whether it is manned or unmanned, watching that road? >> sir, from this distance away from the war fight, i would not hazard a guess whether we actually own the road, any

stretch of its 24 hours a day. i do know that there is isr coverage and force to dominate portions of the road when they operate on them but quite frankly i haven't looked at how many kilometers that is. my first visit to afghanistan was a couple of weeks ago and i was struck by the difference in afghanistan in terms of how much unpaved road there is and an extreme peril of pop rating especially in the east in the north, extreme fallouts on either side and twice as large country from iraq. >> but less road than iraq? you only have one quarter from rc south to cover? >> i would agree with you, less paved road but i couldn't give you an answer of how much we actually control they are today sir. >> the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from maryland, ms. tsongas.

>> from massachusetts, i am sorry. >> i say that because i'd know general fuller is from massachusetts and we are proud of it. first i would like to thank all or our witnesses for being here. i appreciate the time and effort you have not only put into this hearing but they give put into providing servicemembers service members with the best equipment available. your efforts truly stabilize and i thank you for that. general fuller as i said it is nice to see you again and i want to commend you on our witnesses on the fine work that has been done throughout the past eight years to improve soldier survivability on the battlefield to two improvements in body armor. the services have come a long way to ensure each and every sailor, soldier or airman and marine has individual equipment that they need. but there is still far to go and i still have concerns about how the department of defense is going to meet the requirements of reduced weight, operationally tailored body armor. my primary concern is in the fact that the department of defense failed to establish

separate procurement budget line items for body army as was mandated in last year's national the thames authorization act. in this failure leads to the perception in spite of what you all have been saying here today, the department of defense, army and marine corps are not committed to body armor as an investment item. duguid body armor procurement has traditionally been provided through overseas contingency operation funding in this year is no different. the army is requesting $327 million for body armor while there is no discernible amount requested in the base. what is going to happen when there is no funding and the services can no longer count on the supplemental funds to procure the central protective equipment? the lack of commitment to move body armor procurement funding into the base is compounded by the fact that the army reported in a hearing we heard last week on acquisition and modernization that is fiscal year levin base

budget request for modernization of body armor programs is $0. by requesting body armor funding solely in the overseas contingency operation funds and by putting practically no dollars against research and development for body armor my concern is services are setting themselves up for future situation where once again our soldiers are deployed for combat operations with inadequate and outdated body armor. here are my questions and i'm going to have several. first, general fuller and general brogan what is the long-term investment strategy for body armor procurement, and i know as we have heard today the department is creating one standard for body armor testing and evaluation and i appreciate your efforts and what is the army and marine corps and other services doing to create the same synergy of effort when it comes to procurement and development of body armor? if