congress to restore the gulf of mexico ecosystem. he appeared with fellow commissioner and former deepwater horizon a oil spill commander admiral thad allen. the commission released its final report last month calling for changes in the oil and gas industry operations and role of government regulators. this is two hours and ten minutes. >> good morning. a joint subcommittee will come to order. this is the first meeting on the subcommittee on coast guard

maritime transportation i want to welcome all of our members and congratulate ranking member. i can't tell you how thrilled i am that you have that position rick and i have a long time working relationship. we are going to be off to aúbúbb great start and will be a greatb session working together and i certainly look forward to working with all the members of the committee. the subcommittee on the coast guard maritime transportation is meeting guard commandant and national incident for the oil spill. the bp deepwater horizon spill was unprecedented in its size and duration. elected tremendous natural and economic disaster on its weight. the joint coast guard and part of interior investigation into the cause of the explosion and

sinking of the deepwater horizon as well as the failure of the blowout preventer to contain the spill is still ongoing. the subcommittee will examine the findings of these officials investigation once it is complete. while we await findings of the investigation, the commission on the bp deepwater horizon oil spell as well as the report of the national incident commander has helped highlight significant questions regarding the best methods for the industry and the federal government to use to prevent and respond to future oil missiles to read this hearing provides the subcommittee with the opportunity to hear recommendations of the commission and the national incident commander on the changes needed to the federal law and regulation to help reduce the likelihood of a similar event happening in the future. i'm concerned with the findings of the commission and the national incident commander that officials tall levels of government work and familiar with the national contingency plan.

our nation's 42-year-old blueprint for how to respond to oil skills. but i am particularly alarmed that the senior leaders of the department of homeland security were either unaware or simply misunderstood how the plan functions. i am troubled that the failure of the leadership to recognize and accept and follow the plans and that slowed the command and the control and the days after this bill undermined public confidence and the government and may have impeded their three sons. but this begs the larger issue of the subcommittee has been concerned but since the coaxed guard was transferred to the department of homeland security, and that is the department does not understand nor appreciate the traditional missions of the coast guard. something we've talked about, something we will worry about, and unfortunately something we see happening. while critically important for security accounts for only 20% of the coast guard does on a daily basis, the remaining 80% our traditional missions like

oil spill response. these missions require the department leadership to understand that the need to commit adequate resources and attention as well as participate fully in preparedness activities. unfortunately, that wasn't the case with the bp deepwater horizon insipid. nearly 20 years ago the oil act of 1990 was created and was a national framework for preventing and responding to the oil spills in u.s. waters. since the passage of the act there have been significant changes in the offshore production storage and transportation of petroleum products and with these changes the requirements to respond to potential incidents have grown more complex. this bill demonstrates that we may need to reexamine the requirements under the current law to ensure they are applicable to the present day operations. finally, i would be remiss if i didn't take this opportunity to

remember the 11 transocean members who were lost as a result of this tragedy and to express my sympathy to their families, friends and co-workers with that i would like to yieldñ to the ranking member mr. larson for any comments you may have. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i as well excited to be a ranking member and working with you. we do have a good working relationship last several years in congress and look forward to working on them here in the coast guard maritime said commission with you. thanks. i want to thank for conducting a joint subcommittee hearing and welcome the opportunity to discuss the recommendations today. today the message is clear. undertaking deepwater drilling requires a deeper understanding of the risks that accompany the benefits of the deep water drilling. now that we have these recommendations in hand, congress should ask our policieú offered a rigorous safeguard workers, they benefit the economy and protect the environment. to many lives are at stake and

to many jobs are at risk for the congress to feel to act. if we cannot cap the offshore resources in a way that protect lives and the environment there will be pressure to restrict the resources. the would be devastating to the maritime industry and the jobs that support the economy as a whole. we also need to have the federal agencies with adequate resources to prevent another tragedy such as this from happening again an respond, should we have to respond. i would welcome admiral ellen to the subcommittee and appreciate your willingness to serve as commandant of the coast guard as well as the commander of the response effort even fall in your retirement. i look for to you and your observations and recommendations. the deepwater horizon oil still is a human and environmental disaster of unprecedented proportions. as the representative islanders and how devastating oil skills would be to the coastal region. and i want to do everything we can possible to prevent oil spills from any source is occurring in liberia of the country or any other area of the country. e commission report today

demonstrates we have a long way to go to prevent similar disasters from occurring again. unfortunately congress is proposing cuts and the muscle and bone of investments needed for growth and to protect our environment. if nothing else, the bp still shows the need for the more robust public capacity to respond quickly and safely to ú oil spells and that's reflected in the report. the public depends on the agencies to ensure the safety of deepwater drilling and the safety of the men and women who work on these platforms @

about the risk of the drilling we should put the pieces in place to ensure the highest level of safety. the report revealed many of us expected to learn about this bill. first the federal government oversight of the offshore and oil gas drilling was lax. it didn't do the job. second the federal agencies and the industry were inadequate to effectively stalled contract, contain and clean up the spill of the magnitude. there, we learned that the jones act that protects and supports the domestic maritime industry was not a hindrance to the federal government response of the environmental calamity and we will hear this leader and i know that the commission report and admiral allen will concur. i proposed last year along with many other subcommittees may 19 hearing on the split the country take a step back to ensure that any future offshore drilling in the gulf of mexico lives up to claims of safety and reliability

to get anything, the commission's report only confirms my -- reaffirms my commissions but i look forward to evaluating the commission's recommendations in the expect our witnesses this morning will provide additional insight on these points. congress responded with the oil pollution act. now 22 years later the bp still demonstrates the need to amend and strengthen that act. @ i stand ready to work with the german lobiondo and with our ranking ú democratic member congressman rahall and with mr. bishop and the other members of the committee in shaping legislation to strengthen the nation's oil spill response and prevention law. mr. chairman, the deepwater horizon still exposed the risks and cost of energy production and alter continental shelf. @ we have before us an opportunity to make unnecessary course correction in our production of offshore energy. i urge we not let the current debate on the federal government or the regulations toward us ú from making the necessary

investments to ensure the offshore drilling can be done safely, efficiently and with minimal harm to our environment and to the workers who work on the platforms in the gulf. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. larsen. i would now like to yield to the chairman gibbs of the water resources subcommittee and environment for his statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i look forward to working on the transportation committee and also the chair of the water resource environment as we work to improve our infrastructure and also oversight in this agency to work on the infrastructure in dealing with water. there are two federal laws that relate to oil spill is like the one in the gulf mexico last year. the oil pollution act and the clean water act. the oil pollution act of 1990 was largely enacted in response to the exxon valdez spill oil spill and improved the nation's ability to prevent and respond to the oil spills. under opa, the coast guard takes the lead in organizing federal oil skill responses and

prevention efforts and tidal waters, while the epa is responsible for coordinating efforts in the long title and inland waters. opa authorized the use of the oil spill liability trust fund, which is capitalized by a per barrel tax paid by the oil industry and penalties paid by the responsible parties. that trust fund is used to pay for the cost of responding to and removing oil spills. the second flaw is the clean water act, which is the principal federal statute for protecting navigable waters and shorelines from pollution. specifically, section 311 of the clean water act addresses pollution from oil and hazardous substances releases providing the epa and the coast guard of 40 to establish a program for preventing presenting for and responding to the speed and spills occur in the navigable waters of the united states. the act clearly establishes the responsibility of the federal government, states and maritime transportation industry and i

carry out cleanup restoration and rehabilitation of the natural resources that were damaged as a result of the oil spill. weigel the pp oil skill was a monumental disaster and caused the tragic loss of 11 dedicated oil field workers we must ensure we do not use this as a catalyst to halt or hinder domestic energy production. rather, the nation requires a safe, secure domestic supply of energy product now more than ever. the national commission on the bp deepwater horizon oil still has studied this recent oil spa and made several recommendations regarding the federal response. many of the proposals by the commission or worth careful review and consideration as we move forward. thank you, mr. chairman. i look for to the testimony of witnesses. >> thank you, mr. gibbs. i would like to yield to ranking member bishop for his statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for holding this

important hearing to review the recommendations of the commission on the bp deepwater horizon oil spill and offshore drilling. mr. chairman, in the last congress this committee held a series of hearings in the aftermath of the bp deepwater harbor is a disaster to investigate what went on. what actions are being undertaken by bp and other responsible parties to stop the ongoing flow of oil and restore the lives and livelihood of those impacted by this bill and what measures were necessary to restore the gulf coast ecosystem. these hearings also focus on what efforts need to be undertaken by the federal agencies and the congress to ensure a similar preventable disaster could not occur in the future. last year members of the subcommittee on the water resources and the coast guard were called to similar joint hearing on the subcommittee's of the subcommittees on the tenth anniversary of the oil pollution act of 1990 and the warnings given by federal agencies and other stakeholders that our nation was rapidly becoming a prepared to address future oil skills.

specifically, witnesses testified about the than growing concern that the technologies to extract, process and transport oil will well outpacing the development of technology to quickly and safely control and clean up potential oil spills. over the intervening years, our subcommittees also received testimony from representatives of the coast guard that currently liability limits for both vessels and facilities such as the deepwater horizon were falling desperately behind the levels necessary to adequately address a worst-case release of oil. unfortunately, this committee didn't heed the warnings given to it over a decade ago, and this nation grew complacent the future oil disaster was unlikely to occur again. fast-forward ten years, and unfortunately our complacency proved wrong. in the summer of 2010, our nation was again faced with a massive oil spill, although this time the relief wasn't from the ground of a ship, but from a seemingly limitless release of oil directly from the sea floor.

again the questions arose on how this could have happened, why it was taking so long to stop the flow of oil, and whether this tragedy that resulted in 11 lives lost and impact countless families along the gulf coast should have been prevented. mr. chairman in the days following the deepwater horizon disaster this committee took aggressive action to understand what happened and what changes were needed to take to prevent a similar disaster in the future to read this committee drafted and moved legislation to address many of the shortcomings identified in the aftermath of the deepwater horizon disaster. this legislation reported from this committee by a voice vote was later combined with proposals from our colleagues on the natural resources committee under the than leadership of the new ranking member mr. rahall and was passed by the house in early summer. unfortunately, no further action was taken on that bill. however, it was the beginning of the new congress, we had the opportunity to start anew. today, mr. chairman, we will hear testimony from

representatives from president obama's national commission. in my opinion, we shouldn't be surprised by the findings of the commission to the likely causes of the deepwater horizon disaster or the systemic failures of the oil industry that contributed to this incident. many of these findings are consistent with what we heard during hearings before this committee in the last congress. similarly, many of the statutory and administrative changes recommended by the commission are consistent with those included in both this committee's bill and the consolidated land, energy and clich resources act of 2010, were the clear act that was approved by the house last year. mr. chairman, in my view, the prudent choice is for this committee to once again move legislation to address the warnings raised by this commission and other stakeholders on the very real threat of future oil still disasters. while some of the recommendations of the commission can be addressed administratively, we all know that several critical issues, such as the currently inadequate liability and financial responsibility limit and issues

related to maritime safety can only be addressed by the congress. preventing the next exxon valdez or deepwater horizon is far too important to allow complacency to take over again. as noted by one of the witnesses last congress, we cannot lack the months that have passed without a massive oil still give us a false sense of security that everything is fine. we must recognize the vulnerabilities remain and take decisive action to address the recommendations made by this commission this year. thank you mr. chairman. i yelled back. >> thank you mr. bishop. i would like to recognize mr. rahall, the ranking member of the full committee. >> thank you. i commend you and ranking member larsen for conducting this hearing today. we will hear from the presidential commission examining the deepwater disaster and the retired admiral thad allen regarding additions for ensuring the offshore gas development in the u.s. is far safer now and in the future and that the devastation of the deepwater horizon is not repeated. certainly want to commend our

witnesses, you and in particular admiral allen and the commission called people for presenting our government at all levels for the around the clock work they did and for the country and for trying to ensure the safety and return to the wellbeing of so many of our citizens. while the round-the-clock television of zero oil spewing into the gulf long since faded to black the urgency we felt to take the steps necessary to minimize the likelihood that it happen again should not fade with the coverage. this truly cannot become a case of out of sight out of mind. we cannot forget the 11 good man but lost their lives and families that lost their income when the fishing grounds were shut down and tourists canceled their visits to the gulf. we cannot forget the environmental and economic impacts of this bill but will last long after the oil can be seen floating on the surface of the sea. yet, in the weeks since the

commission released its broad range of recommendations to the reforms and business practices, regulatory oversight and broad policy concerns, we've heard an outcry of the nation from those who claim that it is too soon to take action. that we must wait until every aspect of every investigation has been completed, that we do not need to wait to know that we were not prepared for this type of blowout, that our ability to clean up oil spills is woefully inadequate, that regulators were too cozy with the industry and that a $70 million cap on liability is too small. that is why in my for our capacity of natural resources' chairman to which mr. bishop has referred, i did lead the house and writing to passage the clean air act last summer that legislation but have provided for a major overhaul of offshore jeweling operations and regulations. decreasing the chances that another blowout what happened in the future and making sure we could do a better job of

containing one this it did. many of my friends who voted against the bill argued we shouldn't act until the presidential commission had completed its work. well, the recommendations are now before us. and again and again, they urge us to do the exact same things we did in the clear act. recently been introduced a new bill to implement all the commission recommendations, but again, we are told by some that we need to wait. but we cannot wait. the commission itself said, and i quote, an action runs the risk of real cost and more lost lives and brought damage to the regional economy and its long-term viability and further tens of billions of dollars of avoidable cleanup costs, and of quote. we should not wait to reform the ranks of inspectors who are supposed to be keeping an eye on the and not playing around with industry operators in the gulf. we cannot wait to reform the walls of the government

continent, response and clean up spills or to improve the technologies that these activities rely upon. nor should we wait to improve safety and environmental protection provisions that will ensure the long-term sustainability of this industry as well as the other industries could coexist in the gulf and other areas of the country where offshore energy development continues. we have a responsibility. we have a responsibility to the families of those that lost loved ones in the gulf, lost business is in the aftermath of this disaster and to the american people. we need to act on these recommendations. restore the economy and the ecosystems of the goals and make sure that offshore drilling is done in an efficient and safe manner. no one should have to risk their lives to earn a livelihood. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. rahall. we are going to -- we will entertain brief opening statements from members if they

so choose. i will try to limit them to three minutes if you can do that in less than that i would appreciate it. so we can get to the meat of the hearing. are there -- >> thank you, chairman lobiondo and ranking member gibbs and senator bishop for holding the center this hearing. welcome, admiral allen. it's good to see you, sir, and thank you for your service top# the country. well. in light of the difficulties our country has faced attempting to cap the bp oil still, it's imperative that we increase our ability to prevent future spill# and expand the country's capability to respond contain a oil spell in order to prevent another regionwide catastrophe. immense technical difficulties involved in capping the bp deepwater blowout, i am hopeful we can apply the lessons learned from the bp oil stelle and never again have 87 days of the oil spewing into the water and have

a government bureaucracy repeat (kcovery in the extremep situation.p/ in closing, i would just like tj extend my sympathy and concern for the american families on the gulf coast that have suffered mightily from the effects of the bp oil still, but also becausea of the loss of jobs to the h+0,ú&ú0" kç over the last couple of sessions and welcome your remarks. >> thank you and congratulations i want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee and coast guard and maritime transportation subcommittee on what resources to congressmen lobiondo and congressman gibbs and ranking to examine recommendations of the

to commit to thank the doctor, president of the university of missiles alliance and mr. terry garcia for the service on the national commission on the bpç deepwater horizon. further i take a moment to thank admiral thad allen for his service on managing the deepwater horizon incident and of course service as the commandant of the coast guard. it's good to have the admiral appear before us today. during a 111th congress as the chairman of the coast guard subcommittee, i convened a subcommittee hearing to examine the vessel operations in the exclusive economic zone and the infrastructure convened to separate hearings to examine the deepwater horizon accident and i traveled to the gulf and had the opportunity to observe the operations in the macondo site at the macondo site several times. and i appreciate the

thoroughness of the commission report and the fault fullness of the commission's recommendations. last year under the leadership of the then chairman rahall and the reforms with which the commission is calling for today including increasing the offshore responding to the issues we examine the coast guard subcommittee, this legislation would also have required all of vessels involved in the resource development in the eec owned by the u.s. citizens who would pay u.s. taxes. the legislation will also have required such vessels to be crewed by u.s. citizens, a further, to help those in the8 claim processing system. the legislation include the provision of i offered that would have reduced from 90 days

to 45 days they have to settle be presented for the life of the trust fund. act is a kind of strong that our law and regulations are equal to the risk and the offshore drilling. my belief is only reconfirmed by recommendations. and i look forward to our testimony and thank the witnesses for being with us and for that mr. chairman i yield back. i&h"ñ?z?>"v

to being on the transportation i would also at that time chair of the emergency communications> preparedness response with the homeland security committee, so i actually visited the gulf several times to observe the progress from a multiple areas. within those visits, there were some key things that i would like to acknowledge.:z the millions of gallons of crude oil that was streaming into the? shores. but i think when we look at the observations i made a report myself of that i want to

underscore the large challenges that the response teams face an the lessons taught to be learned in the aftermath of thisz catastrophe. for example, the failure of the? confusion about the number of booms and skimmers that werex? located and where they needed to be placed. the confusion surrounding the chain of command was exacerbated by the number of governorñ?: agencies that comprised the unified response. and moreover, the magnitude of the disaster rendered many of the federal government agencies contingency plans almost inoperable. i represent california's 37 congressional district. we have offshore drilling in my district, and i am concerned about what happened there and how it can happen again.> finally, i brought forth legislation securing health for the ocean resources and its environment act called the shor act. one, to look at improving the the spill response and account team and prevention capacity. number two, better to find the coordination between the federal, state and local

response is. and i am disturbed to say that the same problems we had with her can katrina didn't seem toz? be resolved in our response of federal, state and local elected officials. to clarify the existingñ? authority to receive funds from the oil spill liability trustj fund, to double the amount that coast guards may receive each year with a percentage dedicate towards its oil spill research and development. to mandate the improvements and the frequency and quality of th? coast guard safety inspections and certification requirements, to require prompt posting by th coast guard unified command of oil spill incident plansñ publicly utilizing all resources not depending upon cable tv to tell the message and finally, to strengthen the coastal state still planning and response. i plan on free introducing this legislation, but more importantly i am also veryn thankful for the report that all of you did, and we look forward to working together. i yield back.

64, congressman miller? >> thank you, chairman, and with all deference sitting next to a great marine, duncan hunter, and my dad was a marine and my son-in-law is a marina and my dad was in the air force, hats off to the coast guard and i'm looking forward to hearing admiral adel to -- admiral allan. i just want to echo what has been said. just a quick point mr. chairman in regard to the jones act, which is i think it's right to becoming up in the witnesses' testimony and i sure there will be some questions about that today i personally believe it's the jones act is a jury critical component of america's maritime heritage, and during this tragic incident in the gulf, the jones act suffered from an unfortunate misguided on true media campaign against the jones act and they were singing the jones act hindered cleanup efforts and created a lot of the confusion in the gulf and actually looking

through the admiral's testimony in regards to the applications of the jones act there was a misperception that the jones act and he did the use for the deepwater horizon response operations and in reality the jones act had no impact on the operation and just one other quick quote from the of reports that we all have in front of us. we did not reject because of the jones act restrictions. these restrictions didn't even come into place for the vast majority of the vessel's operating because they acted not as foreign vessels from loading or unloading oil more than 3 miles off the coast and when the act did apply, the national incident commander of your staff granted waivers and exemptions when requested. so i would point that out and i think this hearing is a great way to explore everything that happened in the gulf and in particular set to rest a lot of misperceptions many people in the country and the globe found out that the jones act as we see now i had no negative impact to

read again, thanks for calling this hearing, mr. chairman. >> thank you. the gentle lady from hawaii. >> thank you. odd, too, would like to thank the coast guard for everything they do. they are a major part of our response teams in hawaii. and i also would like to echo the sentiments of congress when miller and her explanations of the impact of the jones act and the misinformation that a rose above the jones act as a result the bp disaster. what strikes me about the commission's report moving on to that is that this disaster could have been prevented, and the companies that were involved in certain things of commissions and omissions that we really need to ensure never happens again, and as far as i am concerned there should be some major accountability by these companies and the follow-up of the disaster. and so, what i'd like to see the committee do is move forward and

support the recommendations of the commission. with that, i yield back. >> we have the gentleman from coastal louisiana who wants to say something. mr. landrieu, there you are. okay. >> thank you, mr. chairman and chairman gibbs for calling the hearing today.

>> every day we fail to utilize our own energy resources in the gulf of mexico and it's a day america is held captive by ongoing crisises in the middle east, the turmoil in the rest of the world, and i wish the commission's report would have addressed the economic impacts of this moratorium. i'm also concerned with the commission's recommendations to increase the liability cap in financial responsibility requirements. make no mistake. i don't believe this should cause damage in the economy. however, i also believe that small oil and gas producers have a role to play in the gulf of mexico.

in any action which drives these producers away will ultimately hurt this nation. i'm confident that a system can be implemented that violates the health of the gulf while still ensures drillers are not pushed out the industry. more broadly than the recommendations, i disagree with the commission's stance that the entire offshore industry can be characterized by mistakes or failures that happened on april 20th that have been more than 50,000 wells drilled in the gulf of mexico, 3200 in deep water. of these wells, macondo was the first major incident. i believe we should keep in mind, and i agree with the commission's report that we should keep in mind the safety of the men and women who apply their trade in the gulf of mexico. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you mr. landreu.

>> i appreciate the chance to serve with you on this committee and look forward to working with you. i look forward to the testimony from the distinguishes membered of the commission here on this bp deepwater horizon spill. the spill was for 86 days, a human and economic environmental disaster. it's unparalleled in our country's history, but it was foreseeable and preventable. thanks to the swift response of admiral allen, the administration, and recovery workers in the gulf, negative impacts were reduced, but still great. as a result of the work performed by this commission, we have a better understanding why this spill occurred and how to prevent similar tragedies in the future. the valdez taught us some things, but that was about environmental damage. there were not a loss of lives. in this situation, we're dealing

with the loss of human lives. we lost 11 individuals on that rig, and we owe it to those individuals and to the thousands of americans who risk their lives every day to heed the warnings and fry to prevent future -- try to prevent future tragedies by looking at the recommendations and passing them. there are tens of thousands of people in the gulf area who had livelihoods devastated, den we owe it to them as well, but mainly those who lost life. if you don't fix history, you're doomed to repeat it. if there are people who die in the future and we didn't do anything to protect those workers, their blood will be on our hands. there are improve. -- there are improvements that no longer protect the health and well being of the people and economy. i lope the congress will heed

the warn signs, respond with legislation that will save live the in the future as well as the economies. i thank the witnesses for their work in safeguarding the people in our environment, and i look forward to hearing their testimony in looking forward to try to see american vessels in the future are safer, and they they are american vessels, and not necessarily ones flagged in the marshall islands. >> thank you. any other members we missed who wanted to have a few opening remarks? seeing none, we'll now go to our witnesses, and our witnesses today include two members of the national commission on the bp deepwater horizon oil spill and offshore drilling. dr. donald boesch is environmental of science joined by fell loy commissioner jerri garcia, the executive vice president for the mission programs for the geographic

national society. thank you, and please proceed. >> [inaudible] >> could you put your mike on, i think? >> mr. chairman, and members of the subcommittees, thank you for giving me and my colleague, jerry garcia a chance to testify. it's an honor to present the findings regarding the explosion and spill as well as recommendations in u.s. policy concerning offshore drilling. as innative of louisiana and having lived through the difficult decade of the 80s, i understand the importance of the oil and gas industry in the local economy and the nation's energy supply. anyone from the region understands the need to maintain a thriveing industry. it was deeply personal to me to witness the damage done to the coast and wetland and communities as a result of the

spill. in may of last year, president obama created our commission and asked us to determine the causes of the deepwater horizon disaster, evaluate the response, and advise the nation about future energy exploitation that could take place responsibly. as you know, on january 11, exactly one month from today, we released our final report. as chairman bob graham noted, our report was submitted on time and under budget. our final report offers suggestions add the administration, congress, and history to improve safety of drilling and substantially reduce the risk of something like this happening again. today, however, i want to focus my opening remarks on the equally important portion of our recommendations, ways to improve the government's oil spill response and containment capabilities. in their response to the

deepwater horizon, let's face it, both the government and the industry fell short. although many responders acted quickly, and in some cases heroically, and admiral allen provided effective and valuable leadership during this response, the commission concluded that neither bp nor the federal government was adequately prepared to respond to a spill of this magnitude and complexity. there was a failure to coordinate effectively with state and local governments and the lack of information concerning what response measures would be most effective. in addition, neither the industry nor the federal government has invest the in the research and development needed to have spill response and technology. much of the technology was the same used in the exxon valdez spill years earlier. at the outset of the spill, the industry was able to control the flow of oil from the well, and neither the government or the industry had sufficient expertise to determine at the

rate of which oil was flowing. the lack of accurate knowledge impeded the efforts to determine the appropriate control technology and cap it quickly. all of needs factors together made for a long response effort that at least in the early stages did not meet the standard of what the law presently requires. in our report, the commission makes a number of recommendations to approve response and containment. among the recommendations, first, the department of interior consults with agencies should develop a rigorous set of requirements for industry response plans and require companies to submit containment plans as well as oil response plans. second, epa should involve state and local governments to significant players in the spill response planning. congress should provide mandatory response for research and development. industries should fund a private

organization to develop, adopt, and enforce the standards of excellence to ensure improvement in equipment for large scale response and containment and rescue, and finally, the federal government should ensure that it has the needed expertise to oversea these industry containment efforts. commission's effort the are far reaching in this area. there's a role for congress for sure in improving capabilities. there's a role for congress also in conducting oversight as our government takes these actions. i'll conclude my remarks by noting the drilling offshore is inherently risky, the risk will never be reduced to 0, but as a nation, we can take concrete steps to reduce the chances of a another macondo blowout. that improves our ability to respond if this were to occur again. the commission feels these steps are necessary to the people of

the gulf who deserve to know their government and industry are doing so. thank you for this opportunity. you have our written testimony and our report for the record. thank you. >> good morning, mr. chairman, members of the subcommittee. thank you for giving us this opportunity to testify concerning the findings and recommendations of the national commission on the bp deepwater horizon oil spill and offshore drilling. any severe catastrophe of significance like the explosion of the macondo well and the oil spill in the gulf of mexico strains public confidence, fosters widespread concern and anxiety, and creates an urgent need for candid explanation, but it can also create an opportunity to bring renewed focus to challenges. as tragic as this was, it can play a positive role in the valuable ecosystem. i'd like to focus remarks on the

commission's recommendations for the restoration of the gulf of mexico. as a result of the deepwater horizon spill, over 170 million gallons of oil went into the gulf with some portion remaining in the ocean and settling on the floor. before the highly visible damage is caused by the spill became clear, many crucial gulf resources, fisheries, transportation, tourism faced long term threats. first, more than 2300 square miles of coastal wetlands, and rare larger than the state of delaware was lost to the gulf. powerful hurricanes also a threat to the region struck the coast in 2005 and 2008 causing more wetland loss. last summer before the spill, a massive dead zone extending up to 7700 square miles was forming in the gulf. finally, the deepwater horizon disaster made matters worse. 11 rig workers were killed, 17 were injured. many thousands of people were

exposed to contaminated waters, coasts, beaches, and seafood. thousands out of work, animals kills, and significant habitats destroyed. restoring the coast to the condition before the oil spill would improve the environment, but it's not enough. our goal should not be just to maintain the environment, but we believe the country should aim higher and that the region deserves better. that's why we've recommended that the federal government working closely with the gulf state make a renewed and national commitment to the gulf of mexico and its natural roirses. currently no funding source exists to have restoration efforts. estimates of the cost of gulf restoration vary widely, but according to testimony before the commission, totally restorying the gulf requires $15 billion. the litigation process related to the deepwater horizon spill

will generate some of the needed funding, but congressional action would be required to ensure that those funds reach the gulf. the commission recommends that 80% of any clean water act penalties and fines be directed to restoration. should clean water punishments not be redirected, congress should consider other mechanisms for a dedicated funding stream not subject to annual appropriations. the commission also recommends that congress create an effective state federal authority to administer gulf ecosystem restoration policy. this counsel should implement a strategy for the region that is compatible with existing goals. if funding is to be sufficiently directed long term, a decision making body should see that binding priorities are set and funding criteria is adhered to. congress should say the decisions of the counsel are informed by input from a citizen's advisory counsel that

represents di veers stake holders and restoration decisions are rooted in sound science. coastal restoration is critical, we have to devote greater attention to the marine environment. scientists emerged with more precise questions to investigate, swems a better -- as well as a better sense of monitoring needs. this should be a national priority. a commission recommends that as part of management and restoration efforts, greater attention should be given to new tools to manage ocean resources with the potential to improve overall efficiency and reduce conflicts. this country's need for oil will continue for the foreseeable future. the simple truth is that the bulk of new finds are offshore and in deep water of the gulf. we simply cannot walk away from the resources even as we remain cognizant of the real risks. because we know that drilling will continue to the gulf, it's vital to take this opportunity

to invest in the valuable ecosystem and undo past damage and i want prove its resiliency. mr. chairman, thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. garcia. we're now going to go to admiral thad allen. i want to take the opportunity to publicly thank you for your service to our country. very few people in our nation's history have been called upon to do what you've been called upon to do. one of the largest disasters in form of a hurricane with katrina that you were called into to put the pieces bag together, and had extremely high marks on the boferred, coming down on the coast guard at a critical time when they needed exceptional leadership, and you went above and beyond with that. certainly, the issue we're here with today. one the disasters that our nation could imagine to deal

with, and you were asked and responded to serve your country. we owe you a debt of gratitude, and we thank you for being here today. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman, and chairman gibbs, ranking member larson and bishop, thank you for letting me speak today. i'll limit my remarks here this morning. a couple caveats before i begin. i'm no longer in public service having retired from the coast guard on july 1, 2011 having departed government service as a senior executive on october 1. accordingly, my e associations with spill response and recovery activities and regulatory reviews and policy discussions regarding offshore oil and gas development is limited to information pretty much contained in the public reel. . i have been assisted by the coast guard with information regarding my duties, but that is guided by the antilobbying act and has been complied to fully.

i'm employed as a senior fellow and teaching at george washington university, and my capacity here today is representing myself only and none of those entities. i have reviewed the findings of the commission, and i commend them for the detailed work and how they went about their business. i would say there's a number of inquiries as noted by ranking member ray hall earlier on that are in progress by the department of interior, coast guard, and others done by the department of justice. i realize there's attention on acting on what the commission reported, but i think there's information that will be developed in the inquiries that somehow should be taken into consideration given there are two phases associated with this, and commend to both committees it's my personal recommendation that subcommittees take advantage of the initial efforts to be included in legislation that may be considered going forward. for the purposes of my testimony here today, i'd like to focus on eight areas.

there will be a federal on scene report coming out as well focusing on issues focused on my responsibilities as incident commander. this came about when there's a spill of significance and where to focus when moving forward. the first is oil spill government and the role of the national response team. throughout the entire response, even before i assumed my duties as the national incident commander, there was significant misunderstanding about what the national plan is and what it does. a lot of that was jux posed against the staff ford act and what is done pursuant to an emergency declaration in relation to state and local governments and their jury dictions. we need to have a frank conversation about what that means. i think it's undenial we have to have greater participation of the state and local levels regarding our area planning process and oil spill exercising process. spills of narnl significance in the national incident command i

believe going guard, we need to consider having a presidential declaration when the things are occurring in the subsequent things to kick in on automatic authorities to be sought. these will be things like given authority and jurisdiction to act under the clean water act, the authority to reduce standby requirements or equipment elsewhere in the country, and make that available should we need it. there's already been comments made about oil spill prearptness and research and development. i can tell you the worst time to do research and development is during an oil spill. the research and development system following the act of 1990 an inner agency formed to do that is something we need to seriously look at, age i highly commend the recommendations to reestablish a fund and have a robust -- research and

development program moving forward. we did not make process in skimming and use when the legislation was passed after the excon more valdez. there's talk about the trust fund, and we have to look at the limit of the trust fund that stands currently at $1 billion. it needs to be looked out because there's a limiting factor on what the government could do if there was not a party. inner agency coordination was key. my goal as the national incident commander was to create unity of effort. we need to look at the role of the inarm response team moving forward and how they are employed. we establish an inner agency solutions group at the national incident command to hand m unique challenges handed to us like the flow rate problem. that these to be institutionized in the national response team and made part of the plan doctrine moving forward. assistance as previously stated,

we accepted every reasonable our of the assistance from foreign countries, and regarding the application of the jones act, there was no impact on the jones act on this response. seven waivers were requested and never utilized. they were utilizedded in the event of heavy weather was required to bring them in waters. that was never utilized and was nots a factor. two final issues, one, air space coordination. we took a lessoned learned from highty. we took control of the gulf and that improved our performance. i would have done that on the first day. i'll answer any questions you may have regarding the implication of the lessons for future operations of the arctic, and i thank the chairman for inviting me here today. thank you. >> thank you, admiral. i'll yield my time to mr. young. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

i thank the panel and especially thank the admiral. in the aftermath of the deepwater horizon spill response was purely inadequate. relearned from the exxon-valdez spill. i'm not excited about the commission's recommendations, and i thank you for looking at the rest of it because it doesn't give us the answer to why the explosion occurred, the deepwater horizon, and i think that's what we ought to address, what human factors were involved and whether it was mechanical, a criminal action, and until we find that out, i don't believe we should rush into writing legislation. actually, what we came out for valdez was harbours. we didn't have any protection until exxon-valdez. it wasn't good in the deep water area. they are going to require response capability of 400% of

worse case scenario discharge, but yet how to ensure it, they say that's not our job. we're in the boat people. then the coast guard, all do respect, you're no longer with them, they say that's not our job. our job is not to say how much oil gets picked up or how. our job is to ensure whatever method is employed is safe. as you can see, there's a gap, a regulatory gap, and as a result, the industry's left to police itself. the very thing and every reporter concluded is the major problem of the deepwater horizon. some are proposing to have the shipping fill that gap. abs does work for both agencies, and it does expertise in evalbaiting specifications in the equipment plans. what would you think about the usbs taking over that program? either one of you, all of you, i don't care. >> first of all, i think it's

clear that it's third party inspection of drilling systems. we shouldn't be left to industry standard, and that's done by a variety of institutions. the abs has a process where they drill that -- i'm sorry, inspect that, and review the plans. simple components of these drills systems have to be the subject of my view. the blue and yellow control pods, and choke and kill lines. >> right now, it's not being done. we could do that. we could set that up? i don't want the government to do it right now. >> right now, there's a certification. >> you guys agree with that? >> yes, that's consistent with our recommendation. >> glad to hear that. that's one of our biggest problem. last summer's spill reminded us of the association with risk. there are risks by the way. 42,000 wells drills, and that is

the first blowout we having, and we did not have the capability to do it, but there was in mexico, there was a number of vessels nearby to assist in recovery and cleanup immediately. what steps has the industry taken to reduce the spill in area areas of the arctic. i'm from the arctic, guys. i want to drill there, and your report is too enthuse yat tick about that, and i'm hearing other comments like we can't do it until we have proper ice breakers, ect.. by the way, we're not getting ice breakers out of this congress. i helped build them, and two are in docks. we can have them leased as they should be at a cheaper rate. i've been pushing that for a long time than buying them k because we will not get the money for them. we need them in the arctic. what steps have been taken by the industry like shell and ect.

and the arctic that's different in the gulf to work on it? any steps? >> congressman young, we do address the arctic in the reports, and we do indicate in our report that drilling can be done in the arctic. we are suggesting that there's certain steps that should obviously be taken before drilling commenced. you noted most of them which is industry should demonstrate it has the capacity to respond and contain blowouts. there's clear difference in the arctic than the gulf. it's shallower than the gulf, but we were concerned about the governments and the industry's ability to respond. if they can show they have the capability of overseeing and responding to a spill, then drilling should commence. >> but my problem is it is shallower. it's low pressure; is that correct? >> yes. >> the chance of blowouts are minimum, and because i don't believe we've had one in the arctic anywhere, and iceland

drilling, there's china drilling now, i believe russia is drilling now, greenland is drilling now. everybody's drilling in the arctic but us, and i want to suggest respectfully that, mr. chairman, if we keep delaying this action, we are doing this country a disservice because they have done the job. as far as i can tell and i've reviewed their reports. now, we don't have the ice breakers. we need to figure out what can be done in the arctic. it may be easier to clean up in the arctic if there was a spill because the colder climate. i don't want to keep saying no, no, no because it's not failed safety. you said that, mr. garcia. >> yeah, i agree. there are clear differences, but also, as you know, in the arctic, there are challenges. e remoesness of certain -- remoteness of certain areas, the ability to stage personnel and

equipment, the ice, darkness throughout much of the year, all of that is fobbing tored in. -- factored in. nothing in the report suggests we should not drill in the arctic. it's just saying the lessons learned from this incident should be incorporated to any decisions to move forward. if i can add one other thing. the report, and i just commend it to the record and to your reading, but the report does address the root causes and immediate causes of the blowout, and our chief counsel is coming out with a report next week that will be highly detailed going through each of the factors that caused the blowout of the macondo well. >> well, that may be, but, you know, i've checked the background of the commission and their support in the past, and i want you to know that, and i'm somewhat critical. we had two people before the natural resource committee, and i chewed on them a little bit. i haven't chewed on you, and i might. >> i appreciate it. >> i might. i think there is a prethinking

process for offshore drilling, and gentlemen, we have a problem in this country. as you mentioned, we're not going to get off this kick for oil. there's no way for a long, long period of time, and i have, as you know, talked about economical disaster in the gulf is really because the moratorium. that's the biggest hardship other than the oil. the lack of work has been lost. we're buying that from vennels venezuela now, and all our ships are going to brazil. we have to go to where the oil is and do it correctly. thank you, mr. chairman, i appreciate it. >> thank you, mr. young. mr. larson. >> i want to get him some meat to chew on and leave the folks alone that are testifying. >> you know me. [laughter] >> i want to thank the folks for

testifying. also, i want to thank the employees at the bp refinery in cherry point, ferndeal, district 13, and those from epa region 10 out of seattle for being willing to take an assignment to go down to the gulf and help with response and cleanup during the response over the summer. before we get started, they are working side by side and hand in hand, everybody rowing last summer. i have questions regard to some of my opening statements, and that's about the cost and budget, and first off for admiral allen, you know, this congress is exploring deep cuts to discretionary spending. assuming the coast guard funding is constant, there are

recommended investment that take funds from other coast guard accounts. based on your experience with the coast guard, would that allow the coast guard to adequately perform missions if we were to follow through on some of the recommendations we're looking at in congress? >> i'm not the commoner now, so any comments i have is reflected on my experience i had. i say as a general statement, you get faced with a choice in a constrained budget on what to do with capital investment, replace aging assets, and if you don't, there's a hollow force that collapses on itself. i made difficult decisions to make sure i sustain to what was possible, the acquisition fund and build cutters because we need those desperately. if you do that on a constrained budget, look at your operating accounts as an offset to do that. what is needed is a frng open conversation about the opportunity costs of doing that. i talked in the budget

development inside the administration about risk associated operations to make capital investment. there's nothing wrong with talking about that. we need a frank conversation about what it is we're trading off. i think we have a real reluctant to talk about those things. my decision as it related to budget reflected my dmeedz to build coast guard cutters and operating companies, and you take a short term position managing with fewer resources, make sure you ensure the long term viability of the service. >> thanks. i know that current admiral has made commentings recently about the budget environment they are currently in about what might have to occur there with the coast guard coming into the future. for mr. garcia and mr. boesch, does the report -- did you look at the amount of the investment needed to

implement your recommendations, but for the 80% of the -- >> we did -- our staff has done a general apprisal. we're not recommending in terms of approving the capacity in the department of interior and studies and the like, but in a general stimtion to put it into context we can understand, i think, our estimate is that it might be a cost between 7%-12% or cents on a barrel of oil produced, and you put it in terms of the gallon of gas, it's less than a quarter a cent for a gallon of gasoline. we recommended these fees not be recovered from the general taxpayers who are the land owners in this case paid by the oil companies for the right of exploiting the land and resources, but by the industry

itself as much as the federal communications commission is funded by that industry, so we think this can be done in a cost effective way that would actually increase the efficiency of regulation. right now, there's not enough folks to review the permits that are there under this new standard, but also do it in a way that doesn't affect the federal tax situation that our own fiscal health in this nation, but also a very modest cost easily affordable to the industry. >> admiral allen, just a few seconds left with the chairman's indulgence, perhaps you'll have an answer. you discussed the initial difficulties to work with state and local officials. perhaps because of the difference between how people approach the natural disaster versus a disaster like we see in the gulf. do you have specific recommendations we should be looking at in regards to the act or any other legislation? >> i do. first of all, the area

contingency plan are applied to sensitive area and thousand they are protect -- how they are protected. i think it's absolutely essential that we get state and local governments more involved in that. the heretofore representing the counties or the per riches. it was clear during the spill that the determinations made and priorities established in that planning process were not understood by the local leaders and areas impacted. i can see no other way moving forward to solve that problem than to bring them into the process and consult them and let them have a role in it. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. gibbs. >> thank you. i wanted to thank admiral allen for his service to the country and appreciation for what he's done an your response coordination is something to look at. the first question i want to address to the other two

witnesses, in your oral testimony you talked about ecosystems, restoration, and obviously, that's important, but i noticed in your oral testimony, you didn't mention what was the root cause of the disaster. in your written report you do. the commission talks about there's several key human errors, engineering mistakes, and mechanic problems. pressure tests conducted that wasn't identified that the cementing was failure, fallout procedures in securing the well with the mud and getting the mud out of the well bore, apparent inattention to impending blowout, and i suppose, obviously, human errors and management and engineering errors. where i come from up in ohio, we don't have deep water drilling, but my experience in the legislate legislature we've had

problems. somebody didn't do the rights thing. what's been bothering me is when you think of all the challenges in deep water drilling and the technical challenges and all that and the amount of investment compared to just drilling, you know, a normal well in ohio, what is the function of the regulatory person? before i see in the one part of the report talks about creating a new regulatory structure. before i would support that, i need to know a deal like that there's no regulatory person on these rigs, or what's the oversight? can you expound on that a little? >> sure. thank you for the question, congressman. one of the findings of the commission was there was a failure of oversight. there was a serious failure. you had an agency that had an

inherent conflict. individuals responsible for overseeing safety were also involved in the collection of royalties and making leasing decisions. we suggested that we need to separate those functions, and the department of interior is moving in that direction. we think they should probably go much further. we suggested removing it from the political process within the interior department. inspectors from mms went out to visit rigs, but clearly the oversight was inadequate. we have a number of recommendations on how the government can be more effective as well as have the industry being more effective in monitoring its activities and policing itself rather than having the government be solely responsible for that. >> okay. so, yeah, independent agency oversees that? that's your response? >> an independent agency within the new mre, however they

pronounce their new acronym, but also we have suggested that the industry follow the example of the nuclear industry and set up an industry watchdog that would police its members to set standards of excellence so that an outlier would not be able to impact the entire industry as happened in this case. >> okay. my last question, mr. chairman, dealing with the commission's reasons why state and local authorities were not more involved in spill planning, and i think that can go to all three with the recommendations on how the coast guard can be more effective on working with local authorities in the response. >> i don't think there's disagreement between the commission's finding and with where i stand that if there's an effective local response of the local political leaders can't feel they are disenfranchised and didn't have a say in priorities. there was a plan made with the

state representatives that they reflected the representation of the state and local governments. that was not the case especially in louisiana, and i think moving forward, there that there has to be visibility on what's protected and preparedness, and most of all with local governments. >> i would add we heard a lot about this. i traveled through the gulf. clearly a better job needs to be done of bringing elected state and local officials into the planning process, and they understand what's happening, and so that was one the diskettes in this -- disconnects in this incident. >> thank you. >> to mr. bishop. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman, and thank you all for your testimony, and admiral allen, thank you for your service. it's nice to see you again. i want to focus in on the issue of financial liability because i believe this is an area that the

deepwater horizon disaster clearly demonstrates where our current law is insufficient. current viability limits for deep water drilling is the responsible parties are responsible for the cost and cleanup, 100% of that, and then for $75 million of other costs. that's the cap. thankfully and responsibly, bp indicated they will not be constrained by that cap. the legislation that we passed last summer, the clear act, had completely eliminated the cap. there was no cap that the responsible party would be responsible for all costs associated with the spill. the commission has recommended an increase in the liability to cap but without specifying it. my question is how exposed are we? what are the consequences of our continued failure not to have

passed legislation that addresses just that one narrow issue? >> they are pretty substantial exposure because if an incident like this or even much less than this occurred and the party was not having the deep pockets of bp and made the commitments bp had, we would have been in a difficult situation. the commission did not recommend raising the cap. obviously, i think that was, you know, it was clear from what had gone on, we did not recommend unlimited liability nor a specific amount because this requires more analysis than we were able to do within information we had. specifically, the issues of insurance and how that insurance market would work, and secondly as was pointed out, there's specific companies involved in the industry, and we didn't want to, by making a recommendation without further analysis, exclude the participation of those companies in this industry. >> understood.

admiral allen, you've indicated, i don't want to put words in your mouth, but i believe you indicated we should take a go-slow approach with respect to legislation, wait until we have the reports in hand and so on, but in this area of liability cap, suspect it fair to conclude that we already know that the current liability cap is insufficient given the e norty of the -- enormity of the tragedy in the gulf, and at least that one area is an area that really demands that we move much more quickly? >> i think you can separate out what we know to a certain that it needs to be fixed right now and what we need to know from the detailed investigations and forensics going on right now with the joint investigative team. i don't know how that translates to the agenda you have regarding legislation, but there's a tension here. we just need to recognize it exists and the bets way forward -- best way forward. there's not an issue with the liability cap and total overall amount to spend on a response.

the key is finding the balance and the small operators in the gulf that is represented and others. i think there needs to be some serious research done in that regard on what the impacts would be on that liability. there was a case in the delaware river several years ago where there was a vessel ran against an object in delaware bay, there was a significant spill. the company walked and the government was insured. . we have to look at what's going on. under the pollution act of 1990, we had certificates of speedometer for vessels entering u.s. waters carrying crude oil. there was a lot of talk at the time that might have a significant negative impact on the tanker business. it did not. we adjusted and moved forward. >> thank you. just to, you know, make the point more pronounced, mr. garcia, your testimony was fully restoring the gulf will

require over 30 years an expenditure of $15 billion if we have the existing cap in place and the responsible party is not being as responsible as bp is doing. that amount would very quickly dwarf the amount of money availability in the trust fund and the work remained undone would revert to the taxpayers; is that right? >> actually what we're recommending is the penalties under the clean water act separate from the natural resource damages, and those penalties can be substantial. they are based on the amount of oil spilled in the water per day. >> those remain to be calculated; correct? >> correct. whatever the amount, 80% should be directed to the gulf. congress will need to take action to allow that to happen because if you don't, those funds would then revert to the

treasury, so what we're suggesting is that congress authorize that 80% of the clean water act penalties from the incident be directed to the gulf for restoration. >> a, that's requires legislation? >> yes. >> thank you. i'll yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman bishop. >> thank you, mr. chairman. one of the things i'm concerned about is a chain of command failure and break down. one of the i things was concerned about reading about this up in minnesota and one of the things i saw a governor enlisting 16 barges trying to save his shoreline, and they were shut down by the coast guard. admiral, who made that command? who shut those barges down? >> i'm not sure i know the specific incident, but it might have to do with the barges used as a protection at the harbors moved with incoming predicted

weather associated with a particular hurricane. the coast guard has overriding gurs deers with the safety of waterways and there's a separate oil response responsibilities. with hurricanes approaching -- >> this was not for hurricanes. it was because they didn't have fire extinguishers on board. >> oh, i understand now. i didn't know what barges you were talking about. they brought in barges and put backing trucks on the barges, took the barges out to skim oil. we wanted to make sure there was not a maritime accident associated with the fact that you put skimming trucks on barges. the company operators were completely sportive of making sure the inspections were done correctly and safe to operate before they did that. the states did not understand why we held them up, but there was an overriding safety need on those particular barges. >> was this an extremist situation that the government

was trying to work in? >> i believe that you don't complicate a problem by putting people's lives at risk in the middle of the response. >> was it an extreme ition situation? >> it was, but we didn't want to people people's -- put people's lives at risk, sir. >> okay. the deepwater horizon spill was the first spill of significance. admiral allen was the first commander. the plan does little to define the roles of authority of the narnl incident commander or the additional resources and procedures necessary to mitigate the spill of national significance. what change, and i can ask all of you, what changes of the national contingency plan are necessary to better define the authority and chain of the command responsibilities during the spill? >> we didn't get into the specifics of all of that other than to indicate that obviously

there was not sufficient forethought in definition of what the complexity ofs dealing with the spill of national significance. admiral allen noted in written testimony that there have been plans to exercises that were engaging the government on the spill of national significance, that took place just a month before the incident, and there was not an adequate involvement of the appropriate officers at the right level in government to make that or get learning from that experience, so it's not only the question of having the cry criteria that would move it to that level of response, but also making sure the government is ready to actually exercise and perform under those capacities in an incident which could be once every decade or so. >> as i mentioned a moment ago, one of the big problems was the failure to involve and the

planning process state and elected officials who clearly need to be involved in and understand the procedure when there's a spill of national significance, and we have recommended that steps be taken to make sure that all levels of government are familiar with it. i would say though that the professional career oil spill experts and responders at both state and federal levels were fully trained in responding. it's just that many of them had to be moved aside because this thing was so big that elected state and local officials understandably wanted to be and had to be involved. >> i understand. i'm sorry, sir, go ahead. >> i think you're asking about the national incident commander and authorities needed. currently the protocol calls they designate a commander, and that's previously understood to be a two or three star commitment. we were in the process of the succession change in the coast guard, and i was designated.

first of all, the commander should be pet issue designated. there should be a standing delegation of clean water authorities, once that is made, and that commander should have the authority to redistrict assets nationally and drop standby requirements to move response equipment where it is needed sir. >> thank you. i'm out of time, and i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me ask a question here of admirable allen who might be the appropriate party. the vessel was flagged under the rules of the marshall islands, and they have different standards than we have. do you believe that we should have all of these vessels under united states safety regulations and flagged by united states standards? >> sir, i would submit to you

there's an effect we need to achieve, and it is this. right now for those vessels to operate in the waters, they have to be with the mother time organization. to do that, the coast guard does an organization of whether or not they met the national standards in certificate of compliance where we normally for a u.s. flag ship issue a certificate of inspection. we need to look at the protocols used for cruise ships that carry a large number of u.s. passengers and we do a control verification examine that involves a physical inspection. there are two ways going forward. you can have the discussion whether they should be u.s. or not, but they certainly should be held to a higher standard and inspected, and i would say that the current regime we use to ensure the safety of cruise ships is a good model to use for goaf shore drilling units. >> the marshall islands missed standards, and i think they had

somebody perform the safety standards from that area, and it was like a 4-8 hour examination if i'm correct. if i'm wrong, correct my premise, but is that accurate? >> i'm not sure what you're referring to, sir. what we do with a cruise ship is an expensive inspection while the ship was being built in the shipyard. there's an examine in the service and quarterly inspections. i've taken a part in those myself as a field commanderment i think that type of regime should be applied to foreign and flag vessels operating in our waters, sir. >> you mentioned, i think, in response to mr. young's questions, and it might have been mr. gar garcia, i'm not sure. the government should not be the one to determine the standards. that's what i understood. what was it? mr. garcia, it was something mr. young asked and didn't think of the government should be the third party of the safety inspections? >> i think he's referring to

certification of drilling systems. right now a blowout preventer is built by industry to certain standards issued by the american petroleum institute, and that constitutes the level of due diligence applied to the construction and operation. i think what we're saying with vessel inspection and up dependent third parties like american bureau ships is classification societies to come in and verify especially a blowout preventers, kill and choke lines, and blue and yellow pods on these operations. >> thank you. are there systems that make sure that there's not influences there to make those standards more to the industry's liking rather than maybe the public's need? in government, it's a bad rap, and government can and have proper regulations and proper oversight. that's one of the issues in this congress is about regulation and regulation hurting the government or hurting business,

and yet there's a lot of regulations here that need to be adopted and implemented, and these might cost, i don't know there's something about the reigns b agent, $100 billion and whether this is determined as $100 billion, i imagine it would, and if you couldn't get the senate to go along with what the house had in some regulation on standards, we'd have no standards. >> yes, sir, if i could comment, there's an issue raiseed in the commission report and it's not alluded here yet today. if you look at the rest of the world managing oil exploration off the coast, thousand use a safety risk regime, and as part of the process, they have to submit a plan. that's the subject of detailed discussion. my personal view is you need a hybrid system in drilling

systems and away to present risk and how they manage risk, but the commissioners may want to comment on that. in fact, that's what we recommended that there be a hybrid system where we need to obviously change and strengthen the regulations. >> let me stop you for a minute because i have 12 seconds, and then you can go on. [laughter] if you had passed the act with regulations from the government that couldn't go into effect unless the house and senate approved them, you could have a disastrous oil spill because there's not regulations, and how much would that cost business in the gulf? fisheries, tourism, ect.. would the lack of ability to force rules and regulations cost business a lot of money? >> yes, sir, it would cost business a lot of money. >> great answer. ..

safety case approach, and what that requires is that the operator and the driller must demonstrate on a site specific basis that they have put into place all of the adequate safeguards and measures necessary to properly drill in a particular place. further, we recommended that the industry, it's in the industry's interest that it should set up its own watchdog of the would be of and by and for the industry to provide oversight, similar to what the nuclear industry has

done and which has been very effective. >> thank you, mr. sherman. >> thank you we are going to try to be accommodating in this committee, but i think it's important in the initial session -- mr. cohen, he pointed out a good point in the last couple sessions i wasn't going to cut off the witness is but that isn't fair to the folks who don't squeeze in a question right at the last moment, and it's really important we will go to a second round. we won't cut you off if you have your questions, but i would just ask the members to keep that in mind. >> thank you. i have a judiciary committee hearing going on simultaneously, so i missed some of the testimony, but i appreciate the contribution the panelists made. mr. garcia, let me put this question to you. presidents moratorium on oil and gas drilling was technically lifted mid october i think. but i'm told that there have been very few permits granted.

let me put to all the three part question. did the commission conclude deep water could be done safely, the commission conclude deepwater exportation should continue to ensure our energy independence and national security in the third, how critical is the offshore drilling and gas industry to the economy in the gulf? >> [inaudible] the first answer to the first two questions is yes, it can be done safely and it is important to our energy supply, and finally it's very important to the economy of the northern gulf of mexico. what we -- we did not partaken the moratorium. we didn't act -- in fact two of our co-chairs spoke about it ill-advised to have a blanket moratorium. i understand the page plea is that in deep water during the one requirement, which is actually in our recommendation in the secretory interior is in

play now is the need to demonstrate, certify that one capacity to control a blowout if it occurs. i am a stand from a comment made the day before yesterday by the head of exploration and development of chevron that they are just days away of coming to that agreement, and on the basis of his comments, we anticipate the permits for the deep water drilling would be granted. for those companies that have actually met the standard pretty soon. >> thank you. admiral, let me put a three part question to you as well plea monday morning quarterback. if you believe the department of homeland security cingular leadership was fully aware of how the oil still as opposed to function under the master contingency plan, and i am told, admiral, some of the senior leadership at the dhs, and in some cases failed to adhere to the plan, and did their misunderstanding of a process affect all oil spill response

efforts? >> let me start with a context will comment. the oil delusion act of 1990 and the contingency plan predate the development of the homeland security act and establishment of the department of homeland security. the major incident command under which the secretary operates the homeland security presidential directive number five. from the start, we've never been able to align, integrate or d conflict the role of the secretary homeland security and incident management across the entire country with this is a doctrine called off in the national contingency plan. the first in polls by the political leaders is to go with what the understand and know. in this case it is the role of secretary under the age as pt five, since the was never d conflicted there was never a determination of what supersedes and healthier integrated. we worked that out, but one of the recommendations i have continued to make is going forward the differences in the two regimes and the authorities

and accountability of senior leaderships' need to be resolved. >> thank you, sir. thank you, mr. chairman, and i yield back. >> mr. larsen, you have the unanimous c yonsent request? >> mr. chairman, i ask unanimous consent statement of the congresswoman johnson be entered into the record. >> without objection, so!h ordered. the gentleman from coastal louisiana, some questioned? >> is, thank you, mr. chairman. admiral ellen, you favor past [inaudible] told me to tell you hello to date. [laughter] >> tel dan hello. >> i have three questions and i appreciate you keeping the answer as short as possible. they are very important to read a lot has been said about the jones act, and my question to you, admiral ellen is do you feel the weight of provisions in the jones act provide sufficient flexibility to the emergencies?

>> yes i do. >> great. >> after reviewing the commission report, and this is for you, admiral allen. based upon my experience and listening to people back home who have worked 50 plus years in oil and gas industry, it is apparent that there were regulations that were already in place that were being supervised by the mms that seemed to have been violated. in comparison i haven't seen that there were any regulations that were under the purview of the coast guard that caused the accident. would you agree with that? >> sir, that relates directly to my earlier statement, that we need to understand the results of the joint investigation team. if you think about it, what we

had was a vessel that was attached by a riser pipe to a well. at the bottom of the riser pipe was a system regulated by the department of interior. at the top of the riser pipe was a vessel regulated by the coast guard. there were issues with well control, issues with a cement job, if she was with the gas that cannot. once the gas was released you have the gas rebuilding a vessel that was issued a certificate of compliance by the coast guard to see that they comply with international standards comes with a joint investigative team is going to be doing is not only looking at the cause of the loss of control of the well, but for instance, how did the gas that came up be brought into the intake system into the engine room -- >> so you're looking at the five-year and safety issues related to the vessel itself so it is much more complicated system because you have a floating platform connected to the well and the jurisdictional issues both into that. that's the reason i think we need to take a very, very close look at everything associated

including the performance of the fire suppression systems on the vessel would sell. >> why hope not to have to get to the five-year suppression systems. my only point to you all is that it seems as though the inspections and then by the coast guard out on the gulf of mexico are very sufficient. and the mms may have missed the boat on this, i guess you could say. the recommendations to build additional bureaucracies within the stadium department that oversight of mms, which is now the boem. i have a lot of confidence in the coast guard, i guess that's my point here. the last question very quickly. the motor vessel tashi was on location at the time, and of course this incident occurred in the spring when the water temperatures were certainly starting to warm up. but it isn't required to be at

that platform, there is no her regulation that mandates that the vessel be there. if that dessel would not have been there and this would have been in the wintertime, and the men and women who had to jump off of the facility would have ended up in the water do you believe we would have been able to recover all of those who did survive? >> sir, getting back to my original point we need to look to the entire event and the issue with the loss of life. >> do you believe -- >> whether they were capable of receiving all conditions is a different point. >> on september 2nd the platform had an accident where the ten gentleman ended up in the water. one of them without a life preserver. again, in the summer. it took ten hours. there was no stand by. it took ten hours before we

recovered. my question to you is this. if that would have happened in the winter, when all ten of those men have survived? >> would depend on the procedures and if the safety suits and the systems they are supposed to use. >> fell one dhaka ended up in the life preserver. my question is you would agree that they can be -- that hypothermia can certainly affect them. >> is it can, -- >> and ultimately lead to death? >> yes. >> okay. >> a quick follow-up from the gentleman from the coast of louisiana. you indicated you felt like the waiver provision of the jones act was adequate to deal with the situation with my understanding was the weavers were taken ten days to get the

process. you think ten days is a reasonable enough time in the event of a disaster like this blowout or something like katrina? >> the waivers requested or stand by and then we had to move the vessels to heavy weather so there wasn't an extremist or urgency situation attached to that. i have been involved another in frear mental response is in my career where we needed a timely weavers and receive them as part of an environmental response. >> great. item one of the other points that we talked about both in the arctic and drilling in the gulf of mexico is the united states isn't the only participant. the united states oil companiesç and there is land out there that isn't regulated by the united states and the gulf of mexicona you have gotten drilling from of cuba, and what i see out of this report is a plethora of new regulations and taxes on the domestic oil companies with no happen in the event of an

accident like this occurring on but d.c. and do think the focus might be on developing more on developing better responses for domestic oil company had a competitive disadvantage. >> , chris minn, certainly there is a challenge right now and international waters, you're right. the gulf of mexico is shared by several nations and the arctic has a number of nations whose companies are bargaining -- beginning the possibility of drilling and we need to address that. some of the companies are very safety challenged. it would be a serious problem for us and the commission did in its report identified that has a problem. it's going to require a

transnational solution. we did recommend changes for the u.s. industry. again, we think that there are changes that can be done that would involve minimal cost and would make this industry safer. the commission's report was designed to get the industry back to work, and i think that if you have read it hopefully you would agree with that. was getting during some of the opening statements, but i haven't read it cover to cover and i look forward to reviewing there was also a comment regarding the fully restoring the gulf, and i would be the find, and as you know, the operations. obviously we have got a huge of time, but the fossil evidence

in the arts and crafts indicate there is an ecosystem in place leave to mother nature? >> first of all, let me if i can just amend the comment but also reflect to mr. yanna's point above the arctic development, oil and gas development taking place in the arctic nations. we have some specific recommendations for the arctic but also internationally that it is in the u.s. interest to work with those others, with the international industry but also the other nations to develop the common standards both in terms of safety as well as a response. and in the arctic, i want to point to the last part of admiral allen's testimony which he said a key part of that is the gratification, the u.s. ratification of the sea that is greatly supported by the industry, by the military command is -- we need to do it and have a level playing field to deal with these issues.

specifically with respect to restoring the ecosystem and the we recognize you can't fully restore the evolving and changing gulf of mexico to the way that it was a certain time. what we are interested in and we are recommending is that the environment be restored to the point where it recovers a certain resilience so that rather than in the current state of the function is able to function so if you have the future oil spells it is a much better capacity to withstand the impact and that is what free recommended terms of the restoration program to restore the longer term damages. there is the natural resource damage assessment which specifically addresses the correct those to the way that it >> finally, just for one second, the institute is incorporating state and local response is with the federal government. i commend them to you as a resource.

thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have a background of medicine, i was a cardiovascular surgeon and one thing i learned from medicine is that the international community can be very valuable in understanding health care, and my question goes to the fact that they're obviously have been oil spills another part of the world that we have not been involved in, and other than from the government response has been from a regulatory standpoint or otherwise, are there things we have learned or could be learned about their platforms about how they actually end up the cleanup afterwards, and were those countries offering advice in our

case that u.s. regulations prevented us from utilizing those resources and helping us? >> i will make a short comment and pass it to my colleagues. first of all, the two best examples are probably norway and the u.k.. in the 1980's there were two serious accidents with significant to move to the safety case based system that we talked about earlier on the safety management systems. there was a recent blow out of the montara oil rick gough of the northwest coast of australia in 2009. they operate under the same system and the was operated as a part of the response, it still supports the safety case way to go forward as we said earlier and i am supportive of the system that would to get in touch of what we learned overseas with the requirement to third party delegation of the drilling systems. islamic i fully agree with the admiral. one of the other things we found is the industry was not sharing the best practices and

informations of the industry could do a better job of that. and the congressman, if i could say on the board of the hart institute so i agree with the statement. >> i and stand the changes from the government level, and what your comment about the industry sharing technology. are there cleanup methods that they have used that we could have used that our u.s. regulations prevented? ibm nigh e to those. that's not my area. and if there were, like i said in medicine, the information from the international community is usually very valuable, and i have always found as a citizen of the united states people always ask us to help, and we usually help, but when people asked we don't generally ask for as much help as we can come in and i think sometimes there are

things to be learned and take advantage of maybe we ought properly utilize. that is my overall assessment. thank you. >> the overwhelming majority of the officers of assistance that we dealt with had to do with the actual fiscal equipment and this had to do with how much we could get and how we needed it and how fast. usually involves scanning equipment and fire retardant and dispersive when we were using dispersants. some of the more novel we might have used like the new technologies fallen to the comments i made earlier where because of the policy of the research settlement to place the last 15 years we were at the point we were trying to do research and development to bring the products to market. we can't allow that to happen again and the challenge was domestically to bring those technologies in and get them into the game. >> and sir, i would just say that one of the sad facts of this incident is that the industry simply did not have the response and continent technology that was adequate to contain this blowout in a

reasonable amount of time. it took them almost three months. >> just to comment and then i will finish. again, going back to madison, i learned that there is international studies in health care especially in the heart surgery area related to the press that it devices and the like that have been utilized in europe and other areas around the world for many, many years that in the united states are prevented from being utilized by medical professionals based on our very slowly and very onerous regulatory process. and so i guess i would -- my question was directed at are there things like that in your industry that are out there but that we wanted to roane or indy 500 and we don't rely on the international data, and that our structure really presents us from using for decades when there have been found to be effective in other areas.

>> i guess i would say in regard to the containment of the well because it was operating offshore basically in waters outside state waters and bp and the industry were ones that had the means to control the attwell and cap it that the free market was flowing just about what was working and could be used to that site. >> let me say also on that issue there are two organizations the industry is standing up to supply that capacity to contain a blowout well, and so that's representing some substantial investment that they know they now need and it's going to be based right there in the gulf of mexico in mr. landrieu's district, the capacity to stand by the research and development associated with it is part of the economy, each holding economy and the new world from the offshore leal and gas to the limit. >> thank you. >> mr. harris. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. first call, admiral allen, thank

you very much for coming and hearing and you are a great feast to the u.s. government really during the entire crisis and i thank you for that. dr. boesch, it's good to see you sitting on the environmental committee in the state of maryland i've seen you many times and glad to see you here. >> called you senator >> that's right. let me just ask a question, i had the privilege of attending a briefing by senator gramm and the natural resources committee, and my colleague from alaska suggested at that time that the commission members call me have had an initial by yes against offshore oil exploration and drilling, and i was pleased to see that in the foreword to the report, it suggested on the last page offshore energy enterprise is threatened in the nation's economy security are threatened and i couldn't agree more wholeheartedly. of maryland, which is one of the frontier areas described in the

last part of the book our coastal counties have an unemployment rate between ten to 18% of seasonal employment, but it's how i and i personally feel perhaps we should be looking at offshore exploration drilling off the shore. in the chapter where you talk about chapter 10 of the report, you do say that the biological and environmental factors are well understood in those areas unlike the arctic, and therefore my question is do you think if we implement what's found here, and this is specifically for dr. boesch and mr. garcia, do you think we should in fact, because of our nation's economy and security, go forward with the explorations of the midlantic coast? >> well, we take no specific position about the expansion of oil and gas production -- exploration and production outside the two areas we focus on other than to indicate that we need to approach it in a

different way where there is more substantive analysis that engages the of your agencies in addition to interior, that in which the environmental -- potential environmental risks are judged in the context of the amount of economic gain and benefit and with respect to the energy supply that maybe there. one of the things that focused our attention on alaska quite frankly, in addition to its unique and sensitivity is that the industry and the u.s. gse is saying that for most of the remaining oil is outside of the gulf, so there's going to be in the enormous pressure to develop it and we need those resources it can be developed safely. the other areas are less rich in terms of resources and we have to do that analysis. >> mr. garcia. >> i would just add that the commission report was designed to provide recommendations on how to drill safely. where that juggling might take place would be up to the

administration and perhaps the congress. >> let me get into it because dr. boesch comment indicate you didn't take the position on the safety, i'm going to ask you not as the commission but personally to address mr. young's qassam de fielder to implement the recommendations in the gulf is it safe to do it in the gulf? and should we in fact be doing it in the gulf? >> if the recommendations are implemented, yes, we have said you can safely drill and we believe this report sets that out, and i would also say in response to mr. young's point about whether there was a bias, i believe mr. reilly said we should let the report speaks for itself, and our position is contained in this report. >> let me take the next step. if your position is that yes, it should -- it safe to do in the gulf and perhaps should be done in the gulf, and in chapter 10 use a well, of the midlantic coast of biology and instrumental considerations are fairly well known.

perhaps should be treated different than the arctic, and if there are reserves fell off the coast of maryland for instance or virginia both of which will help employment in my area in my district, and would you confirm should be done in those areas also if there are reserves that are proven to be economically beneficial? >> as i understand, the president acted earlier last year with respect to the congress's lifting the moratorium are not the larger area saying that the u.s. is going to evaluate these questions whether the resources are there or the potential risks as well as the more detailed analysis of the existing data. what the comments were meant to suggest is that in those environments we are not talking about were suggesting that one needs five years of intense study and data analysis that we already know about those regions, and that information, just as the proposal should be brought into consideration and

making that determination. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. harris, congresswoman edwards. glad i made it back in the nick of time. thank you very much to the witnesses. the question i have actually regards oversight issues that came up during the 111th congress and related to the smoke rate and the variations of the slow rate estimates and the impact on response coordination. there were some questions that came out in our oversight in the last congress about risk assessment and contingency planning and particularly, i raised issues related to the worst-case scenario which didn't even seem to come close to the scenario the was reached in this bill, and so i wonder if you can talk to me a bit about the recommendation that you have made and how we can improve the

independence of the assessment that are done so they have a little bit more validity because that's also related to what the financial liabilities far as well and so if you could shed some light on that, i would appreciate it. >> sure. first of all, you are right. if we did address this issue of the flow rate. first of all, with respect to the flow rate estimates, it probably had relatively little effect on the spill response in terms of the assets and resources that could be deployed. that is a function of where the oil is going. however, what we concluded is there are two important lessons from that underestimation of the rate for so long. first is that it became very important to the right side of design, the containment effort, the initial effort to try to control and contain the well were doomed to failure because the assumed the flow rate. so the containment is important.

second, for confidence of everyone that the government is on top of this that diminished that confidence comes over the freeze alone. then finally as you pointed out the flow rate becomes important with respect to the assessment of damages under the clean water act. >> conagra's woman, if i could just add, the good news is there are some simple fixes we have suggested in the report that would allow the government and the industry to be able to accurately estimate flow rates so you don't have this problem in the future. it's just a matter of putting some simple instrumentation to the blowout preventer, and it is a relatively inexpensive fix. >> kinetic comment please? first of all, i agree. very low in cost investment would give an accurate flow rate without any big dispute i think among the people involved. we've never had to deal with a well blowout at 5,000 feet and having to establish a flow rate that has never been presented to any response in this country's

history. in response, when this became a matter of public concern and political concern, i basically took that function and gave it to the flow rate technical group as a spinoff of the group's highest published in the incident command to have an independent government way to assess that with the means we have lacking the sensor data that should be there and that is using the high resolution and other means. once we did that that allowed the baseline to tell what bp had to go in terms of containment. >> last, if one of you could please comment on this question of the kind of risk assessment and contingency planning because both the estimates, and when i looked at the standards for what was essentially rubber stamped from the mms regarding the risk assessments, it almost seemed as though the industry could kind of put a risk assessment in front of mms. there were few questions that were asked about it and they were all pretty much the same. that in itself i would guess had to contribute tremendously to

the ability to project with the risk might be and to establish mechanisms that would allow for the appropriate contingency planning. >> congress woman, you are right. we have suggested in the report that a better review begun of response plans. i think you're referring to the fact that most of the company's essentially xerox and submitted the boilerplate to mms for their response plans and neither the government nor the industry apparently were paying attention since the referenced species that didn't normally make their homes in the gulf such as walruses'. so yes, a much better job needs to be done and again, it indicates the widespread failure of oversight as well as complacency within the industry. >> this is very important, because we have gotten some criticism by the use of the word systemic problems, and by

systemic we don't mean that all companies were equally negligent as bp. by systemic we mean all companies were using those same irrelevant plans. none of the company's high containment capacity. any number of things were widespread problems not only for the industry but the regulatory regime. >> thank you mr. chairman and the witness is particularly for the thoroughness and the expeditious manner in which you got this report done. with that, i yield. >> thank you. i just got some important questions i want to kind of -- let me just make a comment. i appreciate you all continuing to edit your comments on sestak -- i.t. you should go back and look, and mccaul oil companies design and engineer the wells the same. so you are getting their, mr. boesch. [laughter] admiral allen, there are parts of this report - i am interested

in helping to implement and one of them concerns the safety of the workers so i simply want to go back to those scenarios and asked do you or don't you believe having standby vessels or a vessel within at least an hour's time where there are drilling activities of platforms does that or does that not create a safe environment for those workers? >> obviously having the vessel standing by is a safer environment regarding the threshold requirement i think those are the types of determinations we made by the current on going to try investigations. it's not only looking at the incident occurred itself with the performance of the system on the vessel and the lifesaving systems on the rig as of devotee was a logical areas for inquiry into the need to be adjusted as they should be. >> mr. chairman.

>> mr. larsen? >> thank you, mr. chairman. just quickly page 142, won 43 of the commission report discusses the jones act and says the restrictions didn't even come into play for the majority of the vessels operated because the act isn't blocked foreign vessels from loading and unloading oil more than 3 miles off the coast when the appear to have granted waivers and exemptions in question. did i read that accurately? >> yes, sir. >> page eight of your testimony, admiral allen come in reality, the jones act had no impact on response operations; did i read that accurately? did my reading of those statements accurately reflect your thoughts as well? >> yes. >> with regards to the oil has built response recovery

organizations, the osros, this is about wanting to get equipment but not really needing the equipment where the osros had equipment here in the u.s. and i wouldn't say that it was a scramble, but the folks in washington state and the district 13 and try and to identify who had what, what would be useful and how soon can you get there without impacting state based needs and operations do you have recommendations about the osros and oil skill recovery and how they can fit in better and create an inventory to know where this equipment is when we need it? >> i think we certainly do and we identify first of all the lack of capacity to respond to something with such wide scale lasting so long as the osros, but also related to that is our observations and conclusions

about the lack of advancement of the technology that they've used and the degradation of their assets and capacity if they were mainly dealing with smaller scale activities on the more routine basis to then deal with something of this consequence. there were clearly not going in that sense, so we need a more effective way to do that. perhaps admiral allen has -- >> i think what you're referring to is we went through an emergency rule making to allow us to lower the standby requirement for the conduct of operations at facilities that had oil skill responsive grumet but couldn't legally move it because it was a condition of operations. this became very, very complicated because the only way we could do that was to issue an emergency federal rule, and even then, there were residual issues with state law and state requirements, in some cases personal why the devotees for the operators and facilities and commanding officers naval installations where they get the equipment up if something were

to occur. i think moving forward we need to look at this because if you have this bill and you want to bring all available means we have emergency contacts between the states that allow the movement of resources when they need that. i think their needs to be measured discussion and evaluation how we can do that and that's the reason i said if there's a national incident commander designated there should be a presidential designation and what it should come with is the authority to move the resources and if it is needed without coming to an emergency rule making process. that said, we need to understand the threshold of what needs to stay behind so you have a minimum level to respond if you have an incident. >> something along the lines of when the national guard might move from one state to the next four firefighting to help with the mutual aid. >> exactly, sir. >> with regards to the arctic, i will talk to mr. young afterwards, so i want to be sure i'm not -- we have a good relationship, and i want to be sure i talked to him about these questions, so i want to be clear

about it. but he mentioned icebreakers who could we lease icebreakers with the arctic operations if we had to lose? >> well, sir, if i could take a step back there's a defect and implicit assumption in his statement that we need icebreaking capability. how you stores that where you build or lease an icebreaker is a second step. we haven't even got to the point in this country where we recognize there's a capability requirement and we need to do something about that. the lease is just one way you could remedy that. i tried unsuccessfully for four years to get this on the agenda because we will have no floating capability to exert the command kunkel from the point where all must have the strength capable to do that. leasing could be one way to relating we need to have more organic capabilities inside the united states to do that, but regardless of that the issue is nobody's talking about the icebreaker capability problem and they are staring us in the face. >> i understand russia, china,

sweden all have icebreaker's probably none of them are willing to loan them to us or lease them unless they can recover the lack of -- recover the dollars for the lack of opportunity they would have to use them for the same functions we would not use them for. >> the national science foundation leases the vessels to break out for the annual supply and stopped using the u.s. icebreakers. >> other questions? [inaudible] >> on the capacity of response from the arctic and can you comment on the capacity to respond to a situation in the arctic separate from an ice breaker issue? >> i'd be happy to -- >> plans, trains, automobiles? what you have? what's going on? >> if i could, and try not to infer there is a response capability the should be the decision whether or not to drill

and these gentlemen already stated that themselves. >> absolutely. >> my premise has been because we used assets to alaska in the summer to see how they operate, there's the lack of infrastructure footprint and accessibility by the equipment up there to be able to stage a response and use command and control that you need to do that. if you were to go to robert, louisiana, new orleans or mobile and look at the command post established to try to deal with this oil still, there's no place on the north slope of alaska to put something like that. and i'm differentiating what a oil exploration company might have out there in terms of response vessels. the oversight that has to be done, the access to the air strips, all weather aircraft, all those are issues that come into play on the north slope of alaska, and from my standpoint as a former commandant, my concern was if i'm held accountable to conduct a type of oversight that would basically pulled through by this commission, there is a lack of a

footprint out there to do that. this is independent of the merits associated with oil and gas exploration. it's been an absolute. let me be clear i wasn't implying planes and automobiles would be part of this. i'm trying to talk about the broad range of infrastructure for response for the record everybody. thank you. >> admiral allen, we talked about this a little bit. oil pollution act required the federal government to conduct exercises every three years to give you prepared -- to be prepared, and we think that was a good idea. was the failure of these officials to participate in march 2010 and missed opportunity for them to better understand how oil spill response functions under the national contingency plan would work in your view? >> i do believe a was a missed opportunity, but i think we need to take a look at whether or not this was a problem or the commission. we are under siege of the tyranny of the president. this isn't a tier one exercise.

it didn't technically require the participation of cabinet level officers. so there was basically no foul, but we gave no benefit from having those folks exposed to the doctrine. my recommendation contained in my testimony is to hold another drilling within one year, to have cabinet level officials involved and let's immediately test the premises and the notions contained in the commission report and what comes out of the investigations let's not wait until the cycle let's do one and figure whether or not we fix the problem petraeus benet i don't want to second-guess what you might say, but if the officials, whoever these officials might be, had participated that could have affected in a more positive way the response? >> you have to look who was called in when this occurred. when the gig sought to beat goes on, napolitano were in the office briefing the president on what had happened. the people who were in the

office having the discussion or not the people because it wasn't a tier one exercise. it would have been involved in that in these international significance. that is the reason my premise would be moving forward to schedule another and make it a tier one exercise on which the cabinet level officials will participate. >> ms. edwards? >> thank you, mr. chairman. to commissioner boesch and garcia, you've made some significant recommendations that really go to what you've indicated or the commission has indicated the failures and oversight and the regulatory structure, and you've made some very significant recommendations to improve the regulatory structure. i wonder if you could comment, please come as we are in an environment in which there are deep cuts proposed to some of the agencies that you believe in your report need to step up in terms of their oversight of this

industry and process at the department of interior come at nowak, epa and coast guard. do you believe there is any inconsistency in the kutz recommended in these agencies in the ability of the agency's then to fulfill the recommendations you have made to prevent both the safety concerns and environmental concerns that might come to pass if there were another spill of this kind of national significance? >> we certainly have indicated the changes need to be made in the agencies and the need to be adequately funded. one of the problems for the mms was the was underfunded and undermanned, and thus incapable of effectively and foley overseeing this industry. now we have suggested that the new boem be funded through the fees that the industry pays, and right now the industry is paying

just a tiny fraction of that agency's relatively small budget, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for the industry which is reaping large benefits from this resource to pick up the cost of confident and effective regulator. >> dr. boesch? >> yes, we have been at this together, we think alike and finish each other's sentences, but one just to add to that is that the interior, secretary interior requested a congress appropriation for fiscal 2011 which would enhance the capacity of the former boem to meet these highest standards and to process these applications, and so the lack of those funds obviously presents a handicap but only if implementing the recommendations but getting the industry back to business. >> if the congress is unable or

is unwilling to impose the fees that are recommended, and inevitably the cuts that are proposed for the agency that would have oversight and responsibility is this regulatory framework is simply unable to implement the regulations that you have put forward opening us up, you could comment, opening up to the possibility that we would have another bill of deep water that we would be unable to clean up and unable to properly project. >> conagra's woman, i would say this bill has cost us tens of billions of dollars and the final price tag or the tab is not in yet. so to the extent the failure to properly regulate the industry would regulate the funding that would be a tragedy. >> i would just conclude and

yield my time. i mean, it does strike me that there is a very significant inconsistency in our desire to make sure that both the industry and commerce are not impacted by the spill of this kind of significance in the future if we are unwilling in the congress to do what it takes to make sure that the resources are in place so that our agencies can fulfil their obligations. and with that, i will yield. >> are you looking for more time? >> i just want to address the gentleman from washington's comment -- >> if you have additional questions i'm going to suggest you submit them for the record. i don't want to cut anybody off, but we could go on for a long time and i think we need to wind this up. okay. i want to thank the panel very much.

this was very informative. the subcommittee stands adjourned. [inaudible conversations] inaudible [inaudible conversations]

this morning on the washington journal we talked to the chairman and ranking member of the house intelligence committee about the hearing held yesterday on the world wide security threats. hois is an hour. what we find interesting and for the hour we have a detail this morning of the top democrat and republican of the house intelligence committee, the newe chairman is mike rogers. republican of michigan and his democratic colleague dutchichiga ruppersberger of maryland. the ranking member as we call it in washington, d.c.. of marylan. thank you very much for being with us. i want to learn more about your views of what you heard about global stress, but i also want to talk to you about how you want to organize this committee. you have been talking very publicly about your collective goals on bipartisanship and oversight.

i want to play what you heard from egypt yesterday and use as a jumping off point for your views on the kind of intelligence you think the white house and the congress is getting. >> because of what happened in tunisia, we were in a much better place to look at egypt and what was happening in egypt. we provided a number of reports about what was taking place. as you can see, i got the same information you did. there's a strong likelihood mubarak will step down this evening, which would be significant. >> if you had to give it a great, how would you give a real-time intelligence as is currently unfolding and has unfolded in egypt? >> i would give it at least a b- plus. host: mike rogers, what grade would you give the intelligence? guest: a-minus.

they did a great job early on of saying we know there are problems in egypt. they knew there were problems in tunisia. it could not pick the time that it was going to happen, but intelligence about the problems were there clearly. more importantly, once it happens, once the protests started, the real question was, did we have real-time intelligence? what were people thinking? i thought it was very good in real-time intelligence so that policy makers could keep up with the decision-king matrix -- the decision making matrix. i thought all that was very good. host: mr. ruppersberger, when you have leon panetta saying that is likely mubarak is stepping down and then it turns

out that he does not in fact step down, what does that signal to the public about what washington knows? guest: as far as confidence, i have great confidence in our intelligence community. we have dedicated men and women throughout the world collecting information and analyzing information. it showed that you just cannot predict what is in someone's mind. you look at what happened. the issue started when a person set himself on fire in tunisia. that started an uprising. the dictator of tunisia, who everyone thought would come down strong of any type of protest ended up leaving. you have the situation with the mubarak and it shows there's no crystal ball. we're looking for the trends and information. end-game is to protect our

country from globalized threats. host: we will be opening our phone lines. you can also contact us by twitter and e-mail. we welcome your comments or questions. we hope you had an opportunity to see all or part of the hearings before the committee yesterday where they heard from the intelligence chiefs about the global threats. the headline coming out was the threat from al-qaeda. can you tell us a little bit more about the state as a threat to americans' right now. guest: al-qaeda, over the last 10 years, since 9/11, has changed quite a bit. they have hathen affiliated with groups who would not have considered themselves al-qaeda members, but were terrorist groups who used violence to

complete their goals. they started to get these affiliate's joined together. in northern africa is a great example and al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula and yemen and places like that. they have joined the al-qaeda network. that increases the number of threats that the united states had to defend against. the challenge for us is that they have gotten more sophisticated and they have gotten larger through their affiliates. and it means that their finances have gotten stronger because all of these affiliate's now pay into al-qaeda to sustain the efforts. when they say it places a bigger challenge today than 9/11, that's what they're talking about. host: in a written statement, mr. clapper suggested that the complexity of the threats and the ubiquity makes the challenge for intelligence community's

even greater. what should americans feel about the level of safety or threats overall? guest: we always have to be concerned. 9/11 showed we were not ready for that attack. when you look at terrorism from a global point of view, we have to focus on how al-qaeda recruits individuals. that's why it's so important that we start working with the hearts and minds of different countries. for instance, in pakistan, afghanistan, trying to stop the training and education of extreme right-wing radical groups that are anti united states and anti israel. we have an example in afghanistan. we are trying now to educate young your children and counter what is going on in a lot of the other areas where these individuals are being trained

-- even further, being trained to be suicide bombers. from our point of view, we have to look at the worldwide threat from each country. we have to look at the training and analyze it to protect our country from terrorism. host:. cia director leon panetta once again on the threat of cyber attacks. >> the cyber a green that is this vastly growing area of the information that can be used and abused in a number of ways, but when it comes to national security, i think this represents the battleground for the future. i have often said that i think the potential for the next pearl harbor could very well be a sniper attack. host: what does he mean by that? what does a cyber attack to the equivalent of pearl harbor mean?

guest: think of where we have come. this started with a guy in his mom's basement trying to hack into the local bank and bragging about it to his friends. it has grown from that to all nations states dedicating a huge portion of their budgets to develop an offensive capability on cyber, meaning they can shut down or attack our servers in government or the private sector. what he is talking about -- if it were to be successful, and our folks are getting good and better every day, to be successful to shut down whole portions of our government to attack infrastructure energy grids and shut them down and have a major impact on the economy and on our ability to defend ourselves, not only from a government perspective, but a commercial perspective, as well. there are tens of thousands of attacks every single day.

this problem has grown exponentially in a very short period of time. we only see the number of attacks increasing, not decreasing over time. host: how are we girding ourselves in the public sector and the private sector against the threat? guest: i will give you the long answer. i was chairman of the technical tactical community of the intelligence committee that oversees cyber security. in my opinion, based on that four years serving in that committee, i think the cyber threat is one of the largest we have in our country. we are being attacked every day. other countries are getting information, whether it is military information, intelligence information, commercial trade secrets, corp. information, because of these cyber attacks. for a while, we were not where we needed to be as a country, but i give credit to admil

co former director of international intelligence, who made this a major issue. what do we need to do? nsa is as good as anybody in the country in developing technology to try to protect us from cyber attacks. . >> were going to have to make sure that the private sector understands where the threat is. an example of what is occurring

out there is wikileaks. wikileaks hurt our country, our ability to get information. when certain companies that we are dealing with, mastercard, decided to pullout from the relationship, they were attacked. the public saw that they were attacked. we just had an attack on nasdaq. very serious. when you get your bank records of the month it's all based onr. records.nt andpose your account had been hacked and you had a million dollars. that tax and individuals who are doing this and countries you'ree doing this have the ability to v make have it with all of our sys history -- systems. somehow there are run by technology. i think right now it is a mat j. issue. we need to educate the public. the confidence level is that clearly an essay is one of the t best at what they do. need to coordinate with the public. we will be dealing with cyber security for a long time totime. come.: >> i want to get some calls. mee concn aborom twitter i'm getting

messages.ut concern about privacy rights anc people's own constitutionalnd rights in the growth of all of the surveillance and also cost.e we will come back to those few issues. baltimore is first up.ep our republican line. >> caller: yes. the the north two terrorist list,ox the fox news reporter, explain that.and w explain about governmenthy involvement. be. >> thanks. i think it is concerned aboutes conspiracies. >> guest: sure. i think there is a lot of misinformation out there about these types of issues.

he was in the united states ands was trained here, went to sch e here., the release of radicalized your and then reached the point wher he wanted to go overseas and actually declared himself and non u.s. citizen. he was a u.s. citizen. he declared himself that he wa no longer a citizen. he joined the declaration of wae on the united states. was this was a transformation of anl individual who had pretty stronb beliefs, obviously and now presents himself as an as incredibly dangerous terroristhe in the network about china.se i say that because his goal is to record americans and westerne europeans who have no visa requirements to come to the united states to radicalize and to commit acts of violence to of kill u.s. citizens. that is the concern of the united states.unit thatdo we stop that from happening? t how do we educate these folks to

make sure they are not being radicalized here at home to cause what are terrorist events? a great example is the fort hoor boooting or the times square bother in new york. both of those were people who rz were radicalized by external wee forces and were driven to attempt to commit acts of violence. texas in the case in texas he did of commit an act of violence. >> host: let me tell you cha before our next call, a u.s. army officer and companyf.i. commander. an fbind agent, especially membr investigating public corruption as a memcaber of the chicago bureau organized crime unit fro 1998-1994. the michigan senate and served t in majority floor leader from cm 1999-2000 before coming to congress. c.a. ruppersberger is in his

fifth term in the house rvices cting maryland's seventh hestrict. he was w a baltimore county executive for 94-2000 and on thl county council from 85-94. he served as a county l prosecutor.ith organized crime, gangs and that sort of thing he brings that tht experience to his work on theo intelligence community.t cal our next phone call from chico, california. you're on the air. >> caller: yes.nd we i understand we are talking andi about national security. i have an issue right here unit within the united states.t as f i was wondering as far as national security, beingg terminally ill and having aids i have to wonder why i face havind my door kick in over medicalaria marijuana when we can't patrol or federal forests to make surfl that illegal immigrants aren'tna growing mass amounts ofo marijuana in order to trade for other drugs or weapons? >> guest: the first thing, ative

your door, we live in a country that has checks and balances.ata emengreat system of government.c so the law enforcement is not therg to be knocking on your door unless there is probable cause to do that which means that law enforcement has to go to a judge to be able to go int. your home. there are many issues we doyou within the united states. you have alluded to emigration. i feel very strongly we need to deal with the issue of ourdma borders.ri demented marijuana. mexico. to deal with very serious problem. we have put some much money intd rrorisddle east and the terrorism fight as we should, but in my opinion we have turnel our back on one of the real threats to the world, drugs, no only people who sell them, but m people will use them, and the crime that a occurs.oritizin so a matter of prioritizing wha is best for our country.e are s at is what we are elected to a do. as far as constitutional civil v

rights we areer very strong on v that. people will be held accountable. >> host: let's go back to some of the testimony from the hearing yesterday from fbihe director robert mueller.followin following up on the testimony of jenn and the polish town of earlier from the wee hk about te increasing threat of people who wish to do their fellow citizens arm. a >> guest: this is a very bad time. has gone up and down. in we are at a time now which reflects changes from our kistanctive and coming out of pakistan, afghanistan along with yemen or right at the top. wou i think mike would agree with th that. we get down to the home run g otremists who have grown over time because of these of access to the internet, use of the internet to both process as well as record and organize and the s like has grown by leaps and bounds. that provides a substantial to

challenge to us. >> host: more about the domesc domestic cat.plea >> guest: welcome and part of that is the radicalization effort that we see from overseas entities. a u.s. citizen who understands our culture, is using it against us. trying to radicalize individuals. but the new york times bomber, like the major has on in the shooting in texas. so they have two strings ofey hw threat.trea onems is they are trying to something likehristm september 11th run a christmas day bomber. the trend somebody, radicalized trained, financed. tue equipped with an explosive r device. unfortunately we were successful in getting that device onto an airplane.t for flying over detroit, michigan. for the un lucky operation and said the allies of a lot of theo people. they have two strains of attacku

a nichannel into the united stas and the other is to radicalize and recruit here at home in thee united states.ted stat >> host: in response to that, d went back and reread december 20th washington post piece that was called top-secret america. in part to it was really about the infrastructure that has been built up internally with the fbi and local security. wri the month-long investigation ecsed on nearly 100 interviews t and a thousand documents found the technology and techniques honed for thee battlefield have cienated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in americas the fbi is building a database.e the employment history, thousands of u.s. citizens and residents. the local police officer. an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigatorst it

increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in thedo public domain. there have been -- i don't know the exact number, but cheese and centers that are synthesizing all of this information.ou what can you tell americanshis o irtching this program about thee protection of their privacy rights at the same time thathera there are these concerns? >> guest: of very important issue. one of the jobs of congress and our intelligence committee is to oversee all of these agencies and make sure that they're doin wee right thing. now, we always have issues wheni it comes to attacks.aggresve. we have to be aggressive. we've made a mistake. how is our intelligence community during this? be asked that question. intelligence moves along. different issues. when it comes to the in constitution we have laws inn.s. place. i represent an essay.

at least in my district and ther firstst person that they canec actually talk to.person on t on the first person on the intelligence community to represent an essay. checks and i can assure you checks andy hat balances and make sure you don't violate the constitution. they have inspector general's. we have set up systems and the s process to make sure there is nh violation of civil rights. that is what congress's role is. violhere are mistakes, if there is a vatiolation we have to make sure we are on top. tho >> host: important topic. ocessest: we are regularly itviewing the process of what dw they do with that kind of how information and how they obtain it. there are rules, requirements,o and laws that they have to follow in order to get that t information, even in the database. in our checks and balance c sysm , it's well under way. if there is a database with someone in it there is some activity that meets the standard of law to allow them to be theme placed in the database. need

that is what americans need toua understand, this notion that the half the story is told.tapped ae watching me or watching what i'm areng on the internet. acne of that is true unless you are involved in some criminal plng eve or you are involved in a terrorist attack planning a event. both of those would hit you on y the list. that was the way beforefter technology got here and afterhe. nology got here. differe now we just havent different wai to comcamunicate and talk to eae other.oing database is because of that technology will be more robust. everybody on that list got there because they had it, were aivitt conducting an activity that rose to the level by law that would get them there. >> host: talking about the that concerns that your fellow party members had about the authorization of the patriot act. >> guest: clearly it is a we shd concern, and it should be. in he should be vigilant in watching these agencies to make sure they are not invading someone's privacy are violatingi

civil liberties. th. c.a. ruppersberger and i sure lots of conversations about this. we are passionate about making sure we don't do that. we subis important that we don't subjugate the fourth amendmentbg to anything other than following the constitution. that being said i have never i n seen a bill more misrepresented in my life and the patriot act. there are two court systems that we have in the united states. fa stellencecalled a pfizer corporation, foreign intelligence surveillance act court that deals with people who are conducting espionage and people who are foreigners who conduc are here conducting terrorist t operations. then you have the criminal court that we are all familiar with. the standards for each course of the same.atur it is just the nature of whatdi. they investigate it are act different. with the patriot access is if si you are switching funds every fivefi minutes, the government f we have already proven to a judge that you're doing bade you things to buy every time you to switch a phone we should be abls

to switch with you. patriot that is with the patriot act as ho a nutshell. >> host: here is robert mueller talking about the tal patriot ackit provisions, specifically the loan willng i d provision. >> the last thin yg i would says as you and others have mentioned, the threat in the state and its is long will soon have radicalized domestically. these tools up forntial fo o reauthorization are essentialo for our ability to identify terrorists in general, criminals in general. g most particularly in the last provision, lone wolves. >> host: sayre. >> guest: the patriot actover concerns many americans. these different agencies. there is an example. we also need tools and our givee intelligence agencies and our lt law enforcement agencies, the fbi and the ability to do the job. o now come on my side of the aisle

there is a lot of people who peo will be voting against the the extension of the patriot act. wat understand the point ofstaa view. in the legislation we can always do better. the way legislation is made youd have to get consensus abcaforyea word. in yesterday's hearing and which we don't have many. plic i really applaud the chairman for having that hearing.d the public can understand what is going on and have themunity intelligence community works.ske i asked the question.said. if, in fact, the patriot act was not extended and we are votingnh on whether to extend it, what rculd be the consequence?esou it would that have resources to do the job. what i feel with the most for suportant issue for me, what we call the sunset. tha that means that we should the reevaluate the law every two or three years. it should not be political. vioa

see whtiether there are any la violations of law. you have to deal with the factsf of force.atof if there is a violation but wend need to when we sense that and reauthorize again ready to see y if there is any violations and change the law. the key issue. i we clearly have to and look atte these laws and make sure american civil liberties are top protected. >> host: the top democrat on the house committee sitting at our table. fayeville, north carolina. >> caller: good morning.on the on the cyber security, i don't really see that as an issue. ofh most of the technology that gett pulled out his alreadyed introduced to the public.do ne i wanted to introduce code oo program into someone else'suteri computer nine out of ten timesf if that person is of importance

were has responsibility they're not going to introduce or have their computer and information, it's going to be on a separate sexual system.on it's not even going to be accessible by the internet.e otr now, the other thing istenology technology. and i was growing up i used tohr hear stories about people. these to hear from the radio stations. broadcast in their head and head the radio in their head.at is ac that is another technology.nd >> host: of stop you there.ause both of our guests were shaking their heads know at your computs statement. computers are protected. >> guest: it is scary. st the capabilities that nation states. take a country like china o rruf indivi that dedicates modest and brightest individuals to be abl to get around firewalls, get wit into your computer without t anybody knowing it, take

information, they call itthe ina exploitation. they exploit all the information and take it back. go they go in and disable your disu computer would disrupt your doe to puter and make it to something it doesn't want to do. that is what we found has ey are happened. e they are excxceptionally good aw breaking down security systems on these computers, exceptionally good. i would not tsa for one minutent that they could not get in andog do something on your computer.sa we have mcafee and other groupsf they do a pretty good job. we need to understand that whit nations deciding to apply the bg resources to breaking your codeu circumventing your firewalls, they are going to be successful. some of the time. why w that is why we have the nsa and these organizations with some o the smartest people you'll ever meet in your life making sure that we have defenses in placedl that we can deal with for this

dangers.technology that is very good and dangerous. fr host: what are the lessons learned from the suspect arm, i think it was called, that was in reportedly intended to get into iran on infrastructure and its n disable some of its nuclear? >> guest: i will talk about untriephistication that other countries,s, hackers and of the people had to be able to attack. us on a regular basis. our pentagon and country. insitries are trying to get information, try to get insideig information from intelligence.rm whate concerns me is that, howy, coul qaeda, we know our enemy could h hire some of theseac factors. very good and smart people throughout the world.u you can look at when russia went to attack georgia, the first is thing they did with cyber attack

the. cyber attacks are serious. one of the biggest threats to c ourou country. technology keeps evolving every singlee day. the good news, as mike rogersmef said, is that we have some of d the best minds in the world. mis there are also other mines that are good also. it is a serious issue, and we have to take it.e we have to prioritize it and deal with dipped. >> host: chairman mike rogers and c.a. ruppersberger. independent line.yes. c.a. ruppersberger yes. remember first point, i don't remember bt the guy's name. it was from pakistan. but on these villages. b >> host: radicalized bypoint, s drones.ee after >> caller: ten years plus the war on tear run by our militaryx corporate industrial complex a r

lot of congressmen and senators that were well founded by theset people, it's not going to well.p there's going to wind up like tlizing a lot of guys just like the guy from pakistan. polc >> host: foreign-policy and poss the possibility of radicalizing. if tuest: well, we have toing. understand something to be if se the enemy has a safe havenanywhe anywhere in the world. let me back up.n/11 the reason september 11th happened is because they created a safe haven beating they have cruitom to operate and recruit people, trained people, i gather finances, sponsor events that ta they could assemble and put put together to conduct an operatio1 like the september 11th has operation. with the united states policy has been is that we will not allow safe havens to exist wherever they are.

some notion that there iss i bombing of villages is just not- true. the there is not that pakistano needs. i certainly at all. we don't do it in afghanistan. s retarget bad g iuys, and that's what we do. pakistan is have their own so effort.otio not hisn notion, loss of civilin casualties, simply not true. w one of the things that we havet0 found is over the last ten as commtedas aggressive as they are, as committed as they are ve two acts of violence in the and united states and europe we havo been able to the stop or disrupt every single one.. that is a combination of the wen foreign policy that we have when it comes to places like the afghanistan and the intelligence ntrvices efforts to disrupt eve these events before they happenn both in europe and here in the t united states and aheround the rest of the world. to >> host: back to thel ove discussion about congressional

oversight. have they been civil rightsey oi violations at? >> guest: we had anes issue whe the patriots, three or four years ago when the fbi wasters sending out letters are givinghs information. we felt it was a violation.w what you have hearings to review what you have done. so far we have seen the stakes. let me give you an example. you have the nsa whose job it is not just in the united states but all over the world billionss of conversations occurring evere day. we have the technology to collect and analyze the informan information we need deals with t terrorists.ac the plan to attack us or afghanistan. t this is what they do. i think so far we are on top ofk

this. i we have to look att it every dat law andere is a violation i ct n be against the law and people hd who will be held accountable.exl >> host: the leaders of the orc intelligence community.park, ne this is carl, a democrat. >> caller: yes. i hate to rain on your picnic,bt le ai'm not sure the american theple are getting a bank for the buck with the money be spent n intelligence.eople i don't think most people up realize it runs up around $40 billion a year within the rest of the world combined in spends for intelligence. be ha >> caller: you might not bethe e happy about the latest numbers.e it's more like 80 billion. >> caller: i stand corrected. pt that makes my point even a little bit better. we hide the appropriations. we had the appropriations and various other committees, various other agencies i shouldg say.it what have we got to mackc.i.

sh after the cia did not have a clue. shortly after that just beforeod president bush ordered anir invasion of iraq we had the cia director say, mr. president, it is a slam dunk. has saddam hussein's as weapons of mass destruction.r that and shortly after that thec.a. presal mt awarded that cia directored the presidential medd of freedom. what did the congress to? bac did they bring back a church committee to find out how? no, they went roughly on their a way just as they always did. ths wonderful things like you two gn gentlemen i doing this morning.: >> host: thank you. he provides a great jumping offt point for how you want to run c. back committee. >> guest: first of all, let me t go back. t the church committee that as into trouble in the sense that

progs scaled down and really cancel a lot oraf very importane programs in the intelligences world that cost less ferrying valuable information. bue in the 1990's they cut the intelligence agencies' budgets and personnel by tens of peo thousands of people that we hade whole sections of the world thad we had no eyes and ears and. we didn't really know what was going on. was i argue that is a huge, huge fos mistake for us.nd it it showed going in.happened so what happened after september 11th is we got back into the human intelligence business. in the 90's we decimated our o ability to recruit foreign spiei overseas to help us give information so that we knew what people were thinking and what to was going on so we could avoid trouble and wars and of the/11 problems. what happened is we decided in a hurry is that we better rebuild our ability to recruit foreign n

spies and countries to help usdi understand what wass going on tl avoid trouble. that was a big cost increase. nhe technology between i september 11th and today and the intelligence business has grown exponentially. for two reasons. one, we just got better at usiny technology to help us find out s information and allow us to maka decisions. number two, we had to have technology to defeat foreign nation technology that is -- and again, i want to stress thiss number. tens of thousandste of attacks ou our cyber infrastructure in the united states every single day. it is an unbelievable amount. wr people around the world still theypendsee the yeah the states failed. .. a lot of money and effort to do that. it is a combination, and finding the balance of where we go forward. i have been aggressive and i know dutch has