agency. site visits, evaluated exercises bring together local, state and federal agencies as well as members of the utility to enhance collaboration and programming. fema oversight and formal after-action reports highlight significant areas that might need improvement. in the event of an emergency at the nuclear power plant we have a public alert notification system that includes warning sirens in the area around the plant. identified support facilities for the delivery of emergency services, fully trained and equipped public safety response personnel and protected measures adjusted to the threat level. our ability to effectively respond to a radiological or other threat lies not only in our comprehensive planning but our long history of implementing protective actions for the public. over the past decade alone, evacuation orders have been issued to the public on ten occasions as a result of hurricanes and tropical storms and together with our partner agencies we've coordinated the evacuation, trmgs, sheltering,

medical care and feeding of tens of thousands of evacuees. consider this. in the ten mile emergency planning zone surrounding the turkey point nuclear power plant there are approximately 180,000 residents. within miami-dade's three designated hurricane evacuation zones, there are more than half a million residents. we've identified shelters for temporary housing with special consideration given to individuals with special needs. we have designated areas for the dissemination of emergency supplies like water, ice, food and tarps in the event of widespread destruction or power outages. we have read difficult-to-activate disaster assistance centers to provide social services to residents inneed of financial assistance, prescription refails, short and long-term housing and first aid and contracts and mutual aid agreements to ensure continuity of operations during disaster response and recovery. in line with the national response framework, all of our plans are scaleable, flexible and adaptable. the county's department of

emergency management fosters an ongoing collaborative planning relationship with the county's mission of central departments and partner agencies to address life safety and property implications from existing hazards. we have a long established state-of-the-art emergency operations center. our nucleus for response and recovery efforts. when disasters threatens, our emergency managers, private, non-profit sector partners as well as media partners come together under one roof, a critical component for a coordinated response entitling accurate information dissemination. our strengths and experienceses from hurricane response carry over to our ability to implement actions for a radiological event. conversely, planning for a radiological event has a positive effect on our ability to respond to other hazards. based on our experiences we offer the following recommendations for consideration.

the recommendation by the nuclear regulatory commission to evacuate americans out to 50 miles from the fukushima daiichi plant has raised many questions. we support analysis of the data and assumptions behind the recommendation to determine if emergency planning zones in the u.s. need to be revised. of course, a wholesale change to increase the plume exposure pathway must be carefully evaluated and weighed against the value of making the revision. it is also important to note that local officials currently have the flexibility to revise public protective action based on accident per ram terse and the situation on the ground. as we have seen in the crisis in japan as well as other disasters across the united states, interaction and coordination with federal partners is sometimes hampered by the lack of familiarity of local and state response organizations, increasing the inclusion of fema and other federal agencies and local and state training and exercises would make a response more seamless and efficient.

finally, it is essential to maintain and expand emergency management all hazard funding programs such as emergency management performance grant program. this year alone every dollar spent in miami-dade is matched with over $5 to build emergency capabilities to enhance preparedness. empg dollars have also enabled us to invest in staff and resources that have been made available to communities throughout the country, including assistance we were able to deploy to new york after the 9/11 attacks and more recently to neighboring florida county during the hurricane season. i thank you for the opportunity to share our experiences, observations and recommendations. >> thanks, so much, mr. sommer

half. mr. pardee, you're recognized. please proceed. >> good afternoon, chairman harper. members of the committee. my name is charles pardee, the chief operating officer at exelon and responsible for all the company's generating assets including 17 units at ten sites in illinois, pennsylvania and new jersey. i appreciate the opportunity to appear this afternoon on behalf of the nuclear industry to discuss the safety of nuclear power plants here in the united states. we have been following the events in japan closely since the historic earthquake and tsunami struck the plant on march 11th. many in the united states nuclear industry have both a professional and a personal interest in the events unfolding there. many of us, myself included, have been to japan a number of times as part of international technical exchange programs to share operating experience with the tokyo electric power company and others. in fact, i was at the fukushima daiichi station about a week prior to the earthquake striking there on one such exchange. our hearts go out to the japanese people as they respond to the humanitarian crisis they are facing. currently six exelon employees are in japan assisting with

efforts there to secure, stabilize and ultimately decommission the fukushima daiichi reactors. it is understandable that many americans are asking if power plants in the united states are safe in light of the events in japan. i firmly believe that they are safe. i would like to make three primary points about the safety of nuclear plants in the united states to buttress this belief. first, our plants are designed and licensed to withstand a variety of natural disasters including earthquakes, floods, tornadoes and, where appropriate, tsunamis. plants are designed to withstand potential disasters based on the most extreme event known in their geographic location with significant margin added to that extreme event to ensure safety. margins are reviewed and improved as necessary as additional information or experience becomes available to us. second, safety systems, equipment and emergency procedures at nuclear power

plants are not frozen in time once the plant is built. in fact, safety is an issue that is being constantly examined by both the industry and our regulators. we have undertaken extensive safety enhancing upgrades to our plants in the aftermath of three-mile island, the events of 9/11 and other events such as hurricanes katrina and andrew that have impacted the united states. particular attention is being paid to putting systems in place to prevent hydrogen buildup, the likely cause of explosions at the japanese plants. in addition we require multiple redundancies in the event of the loss of off-site power. the precipitating factor in the loss of cooling water issues that have led to the most extensive damage at the japanese reactors. in addition, full capability simulators have been installed at each plant in the united states, giving every operating crew the ability to train under

realistic conditions on extreme events such as loss of all ac electrical power to ensure our mitigation strategies are row bust and our operators are fully qualified to respond. i earned an operating license at a plant similar to one of the fukushima daiichi reactors in the 1990s and i personally went through this training to learn how to combat scenarios such as loss of all electrical power. third, while it takes months, if not years, to fully understand what happened at the japanese reactors, industry is not waiting to take action to incorporate lessons learned from this event. indeed, i firmly believe that the nuclear industry is unparalleled in its ability to incorporate lessons learned to ensure excellence in operations. there are two institutions, the u.s.-based institute of nuclear power operations and its international equivalent, the world association of nuclear operators, that are devoted to ensuring excellence by sharing

best practices, assessing and incorporating lessons learned from events such as this and rig laosly assessing plant performance to ensure sound operations. in the united states, the institute of nuclear power operations ensures that reactor operators don't become complacent in any area of operations, particularly when it comes to safety-related issues. there's a focus on continuous learning from events, both large and small that occur at other plants. whenever a significant event occurs, they perform an analysis to determine relevant lessons learned that are then shared with all operators. within days of the earthquake and the tsunami, the industry issued directives to each of our plants to undertake a variety of actions to ensure that seismic and safety related equipment was in good material condition and to review our emergency response plans including each plant's capability to manage a total loss of off-site power. these assessments are on going and i am confident both industry

and nrc will have additional action items in the coming weeks and months to further enhance our ability to operate safely. aside from the safety of nuclear reactors, i know there are also concerns about the safety of spent fuel pools in light of the events in japan. as for the reactors torques bolster security of spent fuel pools. backup power systems, abundant on site water supplies and additional high capacity pumps provide us with the defensive depth to ensure safety of these pools. let me conclude by recognizing the dedicated employees of the united states nuclear industry. safety is and continues to be the primary focus of our industry, and we have tens of thousands of highly skilled thoroughly trained employees working tirelessly every hour of every day such that our plants operate safely and efficiently. thank you for this opportunity. >> mr. pardee, thank you so much

for joining us today. dr. thomas cochran. we have a senator named cochran. >> not related. >> uncle thad? >> not related. >> okay. >> chairman carper and also chairman boxer and members of the committee, i want to thank you for providing nrdc and me the opportunity to present our views on the japanese nuclear disast disaster. i've submitted my complete statement for the record. i will briefly highlight a few things here. you requested that i offer my views regarding the implications the disaster has for reactor safety in the united states. first, i think we all are in agreement that the first priority is to provide assistance to our friends in japan.

but eventually and even today we're turning to the issue of the implication negligencs in t. before turning to that issue, twoish make two observations. first, my colleague, dr. matthew mckenzie, with my colleague dr. matthew mckenzie we made a rough preliminary estimate of the radiation dose of the external monitoring data from japan. we should be mindful the uncertainties at the exposures in this stage are quite large. there's much we simply do not know. with this caution we find the collective dose from the external exposure to date and the consequently excess cancers projected to result appear to be roughly ten to 100 times greater than the collective radiation dose resulting from the three mile island accident. after chernobyl, the kush ma

accident ranks as the second most dangerous nuclear power accident to date. the collective dose of fukushima appears to be in the neighborhood of 100 times less than the chernobyl accident. similarly the long-term human health consequences are less than the immediate nonnuclear consequences of the earthquake and tsunami. this is a preliminary comparison and it may change as we learn more. second, dr. mckenzie and i have reexamined the historical frequency of partial core melt accidents. we found the historical frequency of core melt accidents worldwide is far greater than what the nrc considers safe. by this measure, operational reactors worldwide are not sufficiently safe because of differences in the numbers of reactors, the reactor safety cultures and the regulatory oversight, the next nuclear power plant disaster is more

likely to occur abroad than in the united states. if nuclear power is to have a long-term future, greater attention should be given to current operational reactors. older, obsolete designs should be fazed out rather than having their licenses extended. turning to the implications for u.s. nuclear power reactors, the concerns raised by the fukushima nuclear disaster that bear directly on the safe operation and regulation of our domestic fleet. while others will add to this list, our immediate concerns include our old ge bwrs with poorly designed mark one and mark two containments and subsequent upgrades imposed by the nrc, safe enough to continue operation or have their licenses extended. what additional improvements should be made to cope with hydrogen production in the event

of a fuel-clad interaction with steam. what improvements must be made to extend the time reactors can cope with the loss of off-site power. as soon as the fuel has pooled sufficiently to be passively cooled in air. which actor sites are located in areas that cannot be adequately evacuated, which reactor stations pose an undue economic risk to the local, state and even the u.s. economy in the event of a partial core melt accident, which u.s. reactors should be upgraded or fazed out ãearthquake, flooding or tornado that is beyond the design basis, potential radiological accidents caused by earthquakes and tsunamis should be addressed in emergency response plans for u.s. reactors.

nuclear plant owners and operators must assume a larger share of the financial ris nk the event of a catastrophic nuclear accident. what are the implications of predicted sea level rise due to climate change on the safety of nuclear reactors near coasts? what are the implications for continued failure of the nrc to finalize and implement a fire protection rule? what changes should be implemented regarding radiation monitoring during routine plant operations following an accident? and perhaps most importantly, what's the best process for addressing these concerns? i'd like to elaborate on a couple of these starting with the last, the need for an independent -- >> doctor, i'm going to ask you not to elaborate too much. >> okay. similar to the commission that investigated the three-mile island accident. such an independent body could engender public confidence by examining nuclear safety issues

including assessing the conclusions and proposed corrective actions arrived by both the nuclear industry and the nrc's 90-day safety review. i'll just touch on one of these issues that i raised. the 20-year license extensions already granted to 23 u.s. operational bwrs with mark one and mark two containments should be shortened. similar, no 20-year license extension should be granted to the eight bwrs with mark one and mark two containments that have not received license extensions. mr. chairman, thank you. sometime there. i've run out of time. i look forward to your questions. >> thanks so much for your testimony. as i said earlier, your entire statement will be made part of the record. i'm going to telegraph a pitch and let you know my last

question is going to be to the panel. basically i'm going to ask each of you do give us a really good takeaway, a really good takeaway, not just for chairman boxer and myself and senator inhoff and barrasso, but one good takeaway from each of you from this hearing for our committee, please. be thinking about that. in the meantime, let me ask a first question of secretary schirilo. after seeing the devastation in japan, are you concerned with our state, with delaware's emergency planning process? could anything be improved? a follow-on to that, do you feel our plan is flexible enough to be changed if you saw a need to expand beyond the ten-mile evacuation plan. >> thank you, senator. we have a very robust group in delaware and it truly is a team effort. the ability of dema to incorporate all of our partners from the law enforcement and

public safety communities, both state and our federal partners, i think is very robust. certainly i think the lesson that we need to learn is what can we take away from the events in japan that would allow us to evolve that plant. it truly is a living document and certainly something that we need to understand. as has been stated, the ten-mile epc is something we do practice for and plan for. however, i do think the plan is flexible enough. and certain any the power of the governor, that in the event the circumstances go beyond that ten miles that we certainly could react to. we do, as has been stated, plan for that in terms of hurricane evacuations. it is adaptable. i think as was stated earlier, what the ten-mile zone allows us to do is to really give that early warning and start to begin from that. there's no doubt in my mind, based upon the people we have in delaware, that if we needed to expand it, we certainly could and would do that. i feel very comfortable with that. >> all right, thank you. let me follow on with a question

of mr. summer hoff and perhaps of secretary schirilo as well. the question is, many families in japan have been away from their homes for close to a month or so. in your emergency planning is it explained to people being asked to evacuate that it could be not just for a couple hours or a couple days. it could be for, in this case for over a month, a lot of the folks in japan. my guess is the clock is still running there. do we have long-term emergency housing that can accommodate people for these kinds of extended periods of time? >> one of the things we try to do is, as we -- when we educate the public and certainly practice these drills and exercises is we have an emergency reception center concept. the idea with the emergency reception center is to have a place at least temporarily for people to seek shelter an emergency services from local government. from there we're also looking at

off-site of the reception center some more long-term sheltering capability and we would be looking at federal resources coming in as well as aids from the nuclear industry, through american nuclear insurers and others to provide more resources for the long-term housing needs and those type of opportunities. all those things you mentioned in terms of both human and health services type things as well as the housing issue and the mass care issues, all that is provided and explained to folks in terms of education as well as the resources at the reception center concept. >> mr. schirilo, secretary schirilo, anything you want to add? >> just one quick note. as you know, we have had occasion to stand up primarily through the red cross, short-term shelters, one in the event of certain snowstorms we've had and weather-related events. generally that works very well. obviously in the event we needed longer term, the primary responsibility would be for the public safety. if that were the case, i'm

confident through our federal partners and other related resources we would be able to accomplish that. >> all right. thank you. a question if i could of mr. pardee. this is related to alert system. secretary schirilo's written statement, he stated within 15 minutes of a radiological emergency pseg must sent an al lerlt to delaware's emergency response team. do you know if that's a requirement established by the nuclear regulatory commission? >> yes. mr. chairman, the nuclear regulatory commission has strict reporting guidelines applicable to all nuclear stations in sdwruntd states that ensure timely reporting of events as they're unfolding and regular periodic updates to make sure further information is acquired by the station, that that information is shared with state and federal officials for the

purposes of making protective action recommendations and mustering resources to assist. >> okay. during an emergency, how does a company communicate with the nrc and with local governments? >> we have emergency response facilities both local to the site and remote from the site, our emergency operating facilities and most facilities all have dedicated communication links between the nuclear regulatory commission op centers and on a state-by-state basis their emergency operations centers. these are dedicated phone lines. they have backups in the form of satellite radio or cellular communications and such. there are multiple communications links in twoi share the information i described. >> did you say earlier you spent some time in japan? >> i have. i've been both to fukushima daiichi and kaz whack ka that suffered an earthquake about three years ago. i went about two weeks after that earthquake hit.

>> a member of our staff, i think maybe lori haines said earlier today, suggested the nrc has the ability to monitor control rooms maybe of all the nuclear power plants in the united states. i don't know if that's true, but if you know, and a followup, whether that's true or not, do the folks in japan have a similar kind of capability? >> we in united states all have something called the emergency response data system which is a provision to provide technical data to the nrc emergency operations center and other interested parties. i am not strictly familiar with what exists within the japanese regulatory protocol, but i do know that information flow seems to be much more greatly challenged than i would ever expect it to be here in the united states. >> okay. thanks.

>> i'm going to ask a question of secretary >> here's a question, in yourhrn written testimony you stated approximately 41,000 delawareont yangs live within ten miles of salem hope creek facilities, does that sound about right? there was a full evacuation of that 10-mile radius because of an emergency senator. >> if there was a full evacuation of that ten-mile radius because of an emergency at that facility, how long do you think it would take to conduct that full evacuation? >> depending on the time of the day and time of the year, anywhere from three to six hours. >> three to six hours. if i could, of dr. cochran and charles pardee and mr. boyd, if a nuclear power plant in this country faced a full blackout, similar to what we've seen at

the fukushima facility, in your opinion, would we have a few days before we might see the fuel rods degrade and, therefore, see harmful radiation levels? let me say that one again. i'll just say it again. if a nuclear power plant in this country faced a full blackout similar to what we've seen at the fukushima facility, in your opinion would we have a few days before we might see the fuel rods degrade and, therefore, witness harmful radiation levels? >> i don't believe so if you include within that full blackout the loss of emergency power generation at the site. for example, you have both batteries and diesel generator backup systems.

diesel generators failed in japan because of the tsunami. if they fail in the u.s., you then can rely on -- and they also -- i mean you lost off-site power. you also have battery power. at some reactors the battery is only designed for four hours. it's my understanding. >> any idea if those battery kbs recharged. i just drove one of those new chevrolet volts yesterday. as you may know, the battery constantly provides the force for the wheels to move. whether the engine -- if the engine is running, the engine doesn't run, it powers the battery so the battery can be charged constantly. any idea if the batteries at the nuclear power plants can be charged or recharged while they're drawing down electricity? anybody know? >> yes, they can. we have to have the requisite equipment available. but they can be charged.

they're very big automobile batteries. >> i bet they are. thank you. doctor, go ahead an finish your response and i'll ask the other two. >> in order to recharge them, you have to have a source of power. if your original premise was that you had station blackout, so you wouldn't be able to charge them under those circumstances. i think you've touched on one of several issues that needs to be addressed as a consequence of this disaster. in my judgment, the most important thing you need to do is address how this process should be undertaken. we support the nrc's review. we support the industry's review. but we don't feel that's adequate. we don't feel that the nrc, we should rely solely on the nrc to review its own previous

failures. and we, therefore, believe that you need something akin to a kim any commission that you had following the tmi accident, similar to the blue ribbon commission you had following the bp oil spill. there are people in the industry, people in the government who do not want to have an independent review because they see that that might threaten their future course of actions. >> all right, thank you. let me ask, if i could, mr. boyd and mr. pardee to respond as well to this question. mr. boyd? >> thank you, senator. i know, and i just checked with my good senator here that the canyon has a real problem with regard to evacuation. you heard the small numbers of people, but there's incredibly limited access. so the number very we have is about 15 hours to evacuate the

area because -- and that assumes the overpasses haven't collapsed on the freeway and that assumes one of the only two escape routes is available. so long as it's a little different with seven million people, i don't have the estimate on the top of my head. while we have significant freeway systems there, it's still a very substantial period of time that's been modelled over and over again. i can get you that information. additional xhernts on the second question because it relates to the evacuation issue. both of our plants have eight-hour battery backup capability. diablo canyon's backup generators are fairly high up on the hillside. so it would take a very significant tsunami to impact them, but nonetheless, we are in discussions now as a result of what happened in japan with both utilities about the whole question of station blackout.

the song's generators are right at the plant which is right at the beach, although hopefully a less earthquake-prone area. they have the advantage of the entire marine corps across the street, camp pendleton. arrangements have been made for backup generation, portable generateders and what have you in the event there's some kind of problem there. diablo canyon does haven't that luxury. we've been talking about helicoptering in batteries and what have you in the event there's a serious problem there. >> all right, thank you. one last word, if you would, mr. pardee, on this question, please. >> yes, sir. for the first question regarding evacuation times. our times also vary, time of day, time of year, seasonal varieties. somewhere in the order of four to eight, four to ten hours is representative of our stations as well. to your question about our

ability to forestall fuel damage for a number of days post station blackout, i don't believe we would have fuel damage, although i don't mean to trivialize the amount of work that would be required on the part of the operators to create that result. but we do have even in the events of depleting batteries, we have procedures near united states for manual operation of our emergency pumps that would require no battery power for operation or measurement instrumentation, and in other instances, we have temporary or portable battery supplies such as carts with batteries on them that would allow us to operate the equipment necessary to keep the core from being damaged. and this equipment and these procedures are pre staged. we train on them. we have formal qualification programs on them. i am positive that we'll learn things out of the japanese event that will make us better. we're already starting to investigate how we can extend the lives of our batteries and

such. i'm sure we'll have to look harder at spent fuel pools and their ability to withstand sustained loss of ac electrical power. but the direct answer to your question is i would not anticipate fuel damage after 48 hours. >> okay. thanks very much. i'll go back to the picture i telegraphed earlier. and that is to ask each of you maybe to share with us one takeaway before you wrap it up. i'll start with senator blakeslee, if you'd mind responding, that would be great. >> thanks, senator. i appreciate the opportunity. we have 104 reactors in the nation, and the nrc has identified there are only two plants that are in the highest seismic potential category. both of them happen to be coastal plants. only one of them has a recently identified fault of significant proportions in very close proximity.

and my concern in listening to commissioner jas jaczko's comments in response to senator boxer's questioning was that, although he's looking at procedures in a 90-day and six-month window, i heard nothing that identified the unique needs of these two plants and the one plant in particular which had the direct analogy to the threat faced in japan through the 2007-2011 earthquakes. i would again -- the one takeaway i hope we can walk away with is that for these two facilities in california, we upgrade our rely sensing procedures to formally include seismic safety criteria and standards that directly relate to earthquake hazard in our process. >> thank you, senator. thank you for being with us today. mr. boyd please. >> the senator took my first item. i knew he might. i have a couple of others noted here. i'll mention one of them. that's the spent fuel pool

safety issue that's been discussed today, the re-racking of the spent fuel pools into high density and the slow speed with which these pools are being emptied in order to put materials in to dry cassing storage is a serious concern to us, particularly in the high seismic activity areas, again, like california's two plants. >> all right, thank you, sir. secretary schirilo? >> thank you, senator. in my mind -- as you know, senator, our obligation is for the safety of the people of delaware. for me what is paramount is that we learn from the events in japan. from the standpoint of their reaction and the emergency response that they had, we need to learn the lessons from that. that information needs to be transparent. it also needs to be shared with the state and local counterparts, the people that would be forced to respond to this kind of event.

what i hope is once the lessons are learned and once that information is gotten, that there be a system to share that with so we can change and develop our plans to meet that. if that doesn't occur, to me that would be the greatest tragedy. i would hope that as the nrc and the other federal agencies get that, that it be shared and we learn from that. thank you. >> thanks so much for joining us today. mr. summer hoff? >> senator, thank you. our protective action decision making is based on plant conditions oovps. it's based on the conditions on the ground. from that we start making our implementation for protective actions for the public. we're always looking, first, when we look at issues that are going to require evacuation and evacuation isn't always the protective action we're going to implement. it might be sheltering in place. we'll look at those people who are in close proximity to the plant initially, and we'll also look at those vulnerable populations, those

difficult-to-move populations. i can't think of a situation where we would just say everybody in ten miles evacuate now. it doesn't happen like that. it happens within phases. that's how we conduct evacuations for all types of hazards, including hurricanes and other types of hazards. i just wanted to make sure that there was this understand that the way we do implement evacuation protective actions and it's not everybody evacuate at once. i do believe the ten-mile emergency planning zone is the appropriate planning standard for us. we've always considered that there could be implementation of protective actions outside that ten-mile zone. we've never thought based on environmental conditions or conditions at the plant that somehow radiation would stop at ten miles and just fall to the ground. we always have considered that we would have to move outside that ten miles and implement actions to address the public there. i just want to make sure that

understanding was known. >> thanks so much. mr. pardee, one good takeaway. >> thank you for the opportunity. >> our pleasure, thank you. >> for my takeaway, i'd simply say we understand the concern on the part of the committee and the general public, the public at large. we're committed to open, transparent and proactive communications regarding our current state and what changes we're implementing based on the lessons learned from tea vents in japan and that we share the objective of the committee to protect the public health and safety and we'll do that through concerted operations and profitably learning from the lessons learned and taking actions to improve our safety posture. >> thanks so much. dr. cochran, you the last word, please. >> mr. chairman, on page five of my written statement i gave you just over a dozen take-home ones that immediately come to mind. >> cheaper by the dozen, huh? >> i would hesitate to choose

one or even several as more important than others. let's take the spent fuel issue. we're 50 years into this industry and we don't have a gee logic repository. we need to start getting that spent fuel in hardened, safe, tricast stores and we ought to do it at the reactor site as well as any interim site. then there's the issue of these bwrs. we have old reactor designs out there. a third of the u.s. fleet. the issue you should be thinking about is whether we have in place a process that ensures that those things get relicensed over and over again and we try to patch up the designed efficiencies or are we going to get the clunkers off the street? we ought to have a process that

retires these old obsolete designs an replaces them with better technology. >> all right, thanks for that, for those closing thoughts. i want to, before i thank you all and send you on your way, u just want to go back to something that chairman boxer said earlier in the hearing. she was asking our first panel -- maybe it was our second panel, chairman jaczko and administrator jackson, she asked what is the worst that can happen sdm i think that's paraphrasing, but she asked what is the worst that can happen,nd i said a few minutes after that, i said maybe the worst thing that can happen is on the heels of this trashl tragedy which the folks in miyagi, as secretary of state, i have a real sense of empathy an compassion for the folks there. but maybe the worst thing that can happen, at least for us

here, were it for all this pain and suffering occurring in japan and for us not to learn anything from it, or maybe for us to have learned from it but not to have done enough about it, not to have acted on the lessons that we have learned. and there's a responsibility i think for all of us, not just on this committee, not just on the congress, not just in the industry, not just at the nrc, but there's a responsibility for all of us to work together to make sure we fully implement the lessons that we learn and that we remain vigilant until we have done that. and i'll close with the words i use often in this room. and that is everything i do i know i can do better. i think that's true for all of us. and it remains true of the nuclear industry. and we just need to remain eternally vigilant, eternally

vigilant. i'm encouraged today that that's our intent and we need to make sure it's not only our intent, but actually what occurs. with that having been said, i thank you again for joining us here today and for providing your input. we look forward to working with you in this on going dialogue. thank you so much. with that this hearing is adjourned.

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[inaudible conversations] >> tonight, a discussion examining the boundary between federal law and states' rights. you'll hear from panelists including a former arizona sheriff who is a plaintiff in a supreme court case that challenged the constitutionality of the brady handgun law. this event, from the annual conference on world affairs at the university of colorado, airs tonight at 8:30 p.m. eastern

here on c-span2. >> the jobs story on wireless is, frankly, a bigger one for the impact on the economy writ large as opposed to the microeconomic question of whether or not a given set of carriers builds out. >> the president's chief technology officer, aneesh chopra, on wireless mergers, the demand for spectrum and expanding broadband in the u.s. joins washington post guest reporter cecilia kang tonight at 8 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> now available, c-span's congressional directory, a complete guide to the first session of the 112th congress. inside new and returning house and senate members with contact information including twitter addresses, district maps and committee assignments and information on the white house, supreme court justices and governors. order online at c-span.org/shop.

>> the commission on wartime contracting recently continued its investigation into how u.s. tax dollars are spent on contracting projects in afghanistan and iraq. the panel looked at reconstruction and development efforts by nonprofit aid groups and compared those to the same work by private contractors and u.s. civilian and military personnel. witnesses at the two-and-a-half hour event included officials from mercy corps, save the children and the international rescue committee. this is the 23rd hearing by the commission. the panel's expected to deliver its final report to congress in july. >> today's hearing took shape in afghanistan. commissioner zakheim and i were on a commission information-gathering trip there in january. we spoke with several representatives of nongovernmental organizations, ngos as they are commonly called, that do development work among the afghan people. they had some interesting perspectives on development and shared a jointly-produced ngo

white paper titled, "being smart about development in afghanistan." it reflects lessons learned from prompts involving more than 6,000 afghan communities. the paper argues that smart development should be, one, afghan-driven but with local acceptance and community participation to target projects that are appropriate, feasible and sustainable with close oversight to mitigate the ever-present risk of corruption. two, accountability. ensuring both donors and communities that spending is being done transparently on projects that are needed and valued. three, impartial. being developed by need and impact rather than national governments' political/military stabilization objectives. and, four, sustainable. focusing on projects and support

mechanisms that will enable afghan communities and institutions to continue delivering services after ngo assistance has ended. criteria like transparency, oversight, accountability and sustainability have been key concerns for this commission and have featured prominently in our reports to congress. in particular, we believe insufficient attention to sustainability will prove to be one of the main sources of way waste in -- of waste in iraq and afghanistan. if after the united states withdraws from a country the local government can't supply trained operate earth for a project -- operators for a project or can't afford to run it, then that project was simply a waste no matter how well designed and built. the impressive but likely unsustainable kabul power plant built under the auspices of usaid is a con speckous --

conspicuous case in point. one of the four white paper principles, our hearing titled begins with prts and ngos, provincial reconstruction teams to provide an interagency approach to public diplomacy and reconstruction. usually led by u.s. personnel from defense, state, usaid and other agencies, they are not impartial, but take political stabilization objectives into account as they carry out their work. both prts and many ngos receive funding from u.s. taxpayers, so one interesting question is whether the impartial, nongovernment-connected approach may yield better outcomes for contracting activity in the long run than the prt approach that can, obviously, be perceived and rescinded as an arm of the occupied force. other interesting questions include oversight and budget

discipline. how do ngos with real budget constraints oversee performance and imposing accountability on contractors and other implementing part hers? also -- partners? also some ngo representatives told us if a project goes over budget, they do not ask donors or the u.s. government to recover overrun, but absorb it through their own recertains. i'd -- reserves. i'd like that under o*epgt. under oath. these and related questions will figure into findings and recommendations of the final report to congress that we will submit in july. we will explore them today with our panel of expert witnesses. four witnesses represent ngos, the fifth will speak from the perspective of the congressional chartered u.s. institute for peace. our panelists are matthew mcgarry, country manager catholic relief services, anne

richard, vice president international rescue committee, richard bowers, michael klosson, vice president save the children, and beth cole, director of intergovernmental affairs, u.s. institute of peace. i will note for the record that all four of the ngos represented here today participated in the white paper on smart development. the other two organizations involved were the cooperative assistance and relief everywhere better known as c.a.r.e.. the full text of their written statements will be entered into the hearing record and posted on the commission's web site. we also ask the witnesses to provide within 15 business days responses to any questions for the record and any additional information they may offer to provide. on behalf of the commission, we thank all of our, today's witnesses for participating in what i view is a very important and, i think, an interesting

hearing. and so now if our witnesses will rise and raise their right hands, i will swear them in. do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you will give before this commission is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? note for the record all our witnesses responded in the affirmative. and, um, i will just note that we are now joined by dr. zakheim who will probably tell us that it was traffic that delayed his being here. and so let me just thank the witnesses for being here. and, mr. bowers, we're going to start with you, mr. klosson, mr. mcgarry, ms. richard and then ms. cole. we'd appreciate it, five minutes, if you run a minute or two over, that'd be okay, but after seven, i will be brutal. mr. bowers. >> thank you. i want to express my appreciation to co-chairman

shays and to the other commissioners for the opportunity to testify today. i'm here today in the capacity as our regional program director for south, central and east asia with mercy corps, a nonprofit organization currently working in over 40 conflict-afflicted countries such as iraq and afghanistan. i myself was a country directer in afghanistan from 2004 to 2006 in the early days of the prt formations. mercy corps has worked continuously in iraq since 2003 with the projects benefiting nearly six million iraqis. in afghanistan we have worked there since 1986 under the taliban regime as well as post, and currently work in 12 provinces in the north, central and eastern part of the country. both of those countries receive u.s. taxpayer support through usaid, department of state and others. today i will provide information and examples to to illustrate why mercy corps has observed that development in contingency operations currently practiced by the u.s. government is

largely designed for failure. this is primarily due to the lack of conceptual clarity about the important differences between activities and stabilization and activities in the development. my testimony aims to contribute towards clarity on this conceptual flaw that will be required for the u.s. government to transform current stabilization activities to sustainable development investments as we look towards reducing our military commitments during transition. our experience suggests that careful attention to three key areas would help the u.s. government to increase the impacts of the development programs in contingency operations while significantly reducing waste and improving transparency and accountability of those efforts. these three key elements are insuring that the right actors are engaged in the right goals, aligning u.s. government funding mechanisms with intended goals, and employing proven

empirical-based approaches to promote sustainable development. the first key element which is insuring that the right actors are engaged in the right goals is of particular interest with contingency operations where we see many groups or actors present and engaged in a variety of activities. for this hearing commissioners have specifically asked for thoughts on the differences between ngo and prts, so i'll explain areas of comparative advantages for ngos. first, as many of you know, ngos are primarily staffed by local citizens who are known to those areas and live in those areas. as we are staffed mainly by local people and have been doing these duties since the 1980s, mercy corps, as others, are seen as different from many of the other actors. this has the advantage of allowing us to be seen as impartial. second, ngos are different because we have traditionally structured our programs to allow longer time frames for implementation, lower

expenditures and process-oriented methodologies to improve and involve are local peoples and programs. we have found that when they feel ownership, local citizens are more likely to involve themselves in project monitoring and, therefore, are accountable to sustainability. when these three elements of slower implementization, measured spending and local ownership are present and working in tandem, this allows for a full scope of the procedures we have in place to minimize waste and build accountability. finally, most traditional ngos are not associated with military and are not part of the integrated civ-mill strategy currently employed. we are 100% civilian and most practice methodologies adapted from transitional environments. in this context our comparative advantage of ngos from the standpoint of local citizens is that we are able to operate in be ways that is less intimidating. the second key area i wish to highlight is aligning u.s. government funding mechanisms with intended goals.

just as there is a myriad of actors working on the ground in contingency operations, there are also multiple funding sources and procurement mechanisms operating simultaneously. while mercy corps traditionally does not accept contracts which is acquisition in u.s. government parlance, we operate through cooperative agreements and grants or assistance. since the commission has expressed interest in analysis of the differences between these two procurement mechanisms, this testimony provides our perspective on some of the advantages of grants or assistance. first, because contractors represent usaid primarily, they maintain no independent identity while implementing programs and, therefore, are not seen as independent or impartial. there are situations in which this could be seen as an advantage for a u.s. government policy planner. however, as discussed above it can also carry with it limitations that need to be acknowledged in plan and design, especially in contingency operations with the u.s. military forces are party to ongoing conflict.

finally, employing proven empirical-based approaches to promote sustainable and effective development is a third key area. and in this i would like to remark that methodology does matter which is often lacking in the prts. good development can happen only when proven methods are employed, evaluated, replicated and, in fact, scaleable in different contexts. in 2007 mercy corps undertook a study to gauge the success of two usaid-funded programs in central asia. one to five years after projects had ended, we had research to understand the lasting impacts, and we had found as a result of the methodology used by mercy corps and other ngo and when communities continued to maintain their projects over 93% surveyed that they are still being actively used. [inaudible]

this provides concrete evidence a community-led development can foster a significant change in transitional environments. to do this, programmed time frames have to be extended. to be sustainable, development programs in if afghanistan should be built around 3-5-year time frames, not 12-18 months. the additional time is required to maximize u.s. investment lts by planning for a careful handover. unfortunately, at present the very obsession with stabilization ends up creating missed opportunities. i thank you again for your leadership and commitment in addressing how to best support effective development efforts. while the history of difficulties with doing development within con contingey operations may seem to offer more examples of failure than success, at mercy corps we believe the opportunity does not exist in the world's toughest places. by employing the right actors for the right tasks, aligning funding with intended goals and supporting proven approaches, the u.s. government could make concrete contributions towards

improving development outcomes. >> thank you, mr. bowers, very much. >> thank you. >> mr. klosson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and other commissioners. we very much welcome today's hearing as a continuation of a conversation that some commissioners began with our country directors in kabul not too long ago. save the children's country director would have liked to have been present today, but i'm based in washington and here in his stead to talk about how u.s. assistance through a smart development approach can best serve the needs of vulnerable children who, after all, represent the future of their country. i've submitted a comprehensive statement for the record, and so what i'd like to do is briefly highlight the circumstances that children face in afghanistan, briefly mention the work of save the children and then talk about the importance of accountability this smart development approach our agencies employ in afghanistan. children are always the most vulnerable. ..

the smart development approach we have outlined in our paper can change those circumstances. every ford about save the children. we have worked with afghans for over 30 years and through a staff that is about 90% afghan, we provide protection, health and nutrition and an education programming and nine provinces directly through our own staff and in another dozen or so through partners. as an example of one stream of health, we will work with families, communities health care workers in homes and help

those clinics and hospitals to provide basic health care and well-being particularly for children under five and for women of childbearing age. we are in the business of supporting doctors and nurses as well as community midwives directly with training and materials and we train and support community health workers who work out of their own homes to read some of the poorest and most in afghanistan. i think our extensive experience working in afghanistan has taught us basic lessons about what conditions are most likely to lead to successful outcomes and together with our other colleagues here at the table, we believe that our work should be guided by certain principles and let me highlight one of those four principles, accountability. smart development, which is what we have talked about in our paper, is the -- go to donors and communities and accountability and development programs is a matter building relationships among donors, communities, governments private sector and ngos in which all actors have incentives to

fulfill their responsibilities. i think accountability to donors is pretty well understood. ngos are accountable to donors and we suffer financial commitment so the consequences if we don't meet our commitments is jeopardizing future funding and as a result we have very clear financial incentives to propose and deliver appropriate feasible and sustainable programs. but accountability to communities is also a fundamental tenet of how we work. we are accountable to communities to provide assistance that meets priorities and the matter is culturally acceptable, impartial and does not jeopardize their security. so what does this actually mean in practice? i think local perceptions of save the children are programs and staff are critical to our ability to gain access to communities and it is really acted through acceptance. that means we have to know the people we are working with, understand the dynamics come identify their needs the needs and aspirations through dialogue so access is key and that means we can continue to make field visits and directly monitor the

project implementation and outcomes. but also delivering results is key because unless we meet the community's needs and meet their aspirations, acceptance is going to diminish and that potentially makes much more difficult for us to gain access. ngos are accountable to communities but communities are also and leaders are also accountable so what does that mean? let me give an example of how this tends to work. when we first come to a village to do some work with the community, we actually sit down with elders and we talk about what we can do to help the community and we hear what their priorities are and then through that there is a discussion that results in an agreement on a project. that is all done in a very public fashion so that we are sure people are understanding what we are saying. there is a public discussion in the community actually knows what is happening and who is benefiting. i think that communication is done by our national staff so it is very transparent. is very open and very public and through that transparency we are

able to assure greater accountability. i think our smart development paper recommends strengthening accountability with an increased emphasis on resources for monitoring the valuation within the u.s. government come u.s. government implementing partners and with and local partners and local ngos and we very much welcome usaid's policy announced in january on monitoring evaluation. so i think the redhead and a aniston denniston is a difficult one, but the dramatic needs of afghan children really continued to -- engagement and we propose an approach that we think works which is approach based on long-term commitment, genuine partnership and transparency and we have seen this which is after having driven sustainable and designed and accountable and producing results. thank you. >> thank you very much mr. claussen. mr. mcgarry. >> thank you cochairmen shays and members of the commission for holding this hearing. serous appreciates a separate

date to appear before you to share brief field braised observations on the development principles and sustainability based on this principle in crs's experience we recommend the u.s. government treat developments in afghanistan as a process and consider the comparative advantages of all implementers when designing, awarding and assessing assistance programs in afghanistan. catholic relief services is the official overseer of relief and develop and agencies in the united states. we work in over 100 countries around the world to provide humanitarian relief and development assistance. the crs country representative in afghanistan from 2008 to 2011. i i had the privilege to lead a team of over 450 afghans and 15 international staff working in the provinces of herat, bamian, kabul and conjure. serous teams work in close partnership with local communities, local governments and civil society groups to implement programming in the sectors of ag wrote --

agri-enterprise water security community-based education and emergency response. the idea that development must be sustainable in order to be meaningful is neither know nor disputed. what we observe on the ground in afghanistan however suggested enormous gulf between acknowledging the theoretical importance of sustainable development and putting that. to practice. over and over we see the principle of sustainable development sacrificed in order to make political timelines, expedite her in rates, and deliver easily quantifiable outputs without measuring more relevant impact. thus, small success today all too often produces extremely negative consequences tomorrow. if a school is built in a location that is easily accessible for the construction company but not for children in surrounding villages, or if there are no qualified teachers assign to it, it will not endure and will only tampa net dampen the community's enthusiasm for educating their girls and boys. if the construction of a water system in one village buys

temporary goodwill at the expense of inflaming preexisting conflicts with neighboring villages, then that project is not only unsustainable but actively harmful. therefore, though it may seem self-evident, we continue to emphasize that smart development is sustainable development. that unsustainable development programs are almost always worse than none at all and the poorly implemented stabilization or development activities me in the end actually be destabilizing. in contrast, we offer the recommendation that development be treated as a process. by approaching development is a process that requires careful planning, assessment, implementation, monitoring, follow-up and frequent course correction, we are able to demonstrate consistence incremental results while working towards sustainable long-lasting impact. process driven development is inherently afghan driven and impartial, accountable and sustainable. crs's work in afghanistan provides examples of what this process looks like.

are agri-enterprise activities are designed in consultation with the community that will benefit from them and the planning team at the provincial department of agriculture. before any activities are undertaken, sierra staff and local farmers conduct extensive assessment and consultation to develop a business plan and profitability analysis including the value of any inputs contributed by crs. farmers who participate in the project receive input and participate in workshops but they also receive regular follow-up monitoring and on-the-job training visits. sierra staff in department of agriculture economist jointly visit project project sites to assess process -- progress and the same night lessons learned and best practices. farmers not only reap individual benefits but also work together and growers associations and collective bargaining associations. through these associations they gain an hands leverage the economies of scale in the long-term support network. these growers associations in collaboration with the department of agriculture build individual farmer skills and

their technical capacity for future success. as an example illustrates a process driven method ensures not only financial sustainability but also structural stick the inability. programs are linked to relevant government agencies and build capacity to carry on programs after crs lease. moreover, they plant the seeds for further growth and development. crs's example after nearly a decade in afghanistan illustrates the principle of sustainability is not only feasible, but essential for the effective delivery of u.s. development assistance. commissioners, we appreciate your inquiry into ngos unique approach to development in afghanistan respectfully suggest a full expression of the comparative advantages of various implementers by the gao would help to measure development and pecks and sustainability over the long-term. wrench marks and standardized measures of progress to assess impacts will help ensure a standard of comparison among various implementing agencies. secondly, we asked congress go see much of the procurement

reform currently being undertaken by usaid to ensure that it is needs-based community led programming is prioritize. thank you commissioners for this opportunity to testify. we appreciate your interest in these principles and look forward to working with you as you prepare your final report. >> thank you mr. mcgarry. ms. richard. >> thank you very much commissioners for the invitation to provide testimony. my name is anne richard. the irc has been around since 1933. we began working with afghan refugee communities in pakistan in 1980, and we launched programs inside afghanistan in 1988. today the irc is in five southeastern provinces and herat. we have a staff of nearly 400 in afghanistan of which 98% are afghan. our funding comes from sources including the u.s. department of state, a.i.d.'s office of foreign disaster and as will be described in my remarks from the

world bank or the afghan ministry of rehabilitation and development. one of the three key recommendations from the smart development white paper is a genuine partnership between ngos and local communities is necessary. to "for -- whoa for the paper the success of any interventionist dependent on the investment and cooperation of those it is designed to serve. initiatives that are designed to implemented and maintained by beneficiary communities have the greatest potential to deliver sustainable results. an example of genuine partnership that works as the national solidarity program. the isp has been involved since 2003. it was developed by the world bank and its managing couple as i said by the afghan ministry of rural rehabilitation and development and i should say there are 20 facilitating partners that work on the nsb and are also facilitating partners along with irc. the program operates throughout all 34 provinces of the country.

over 20,000 villages have benefited from the partnership. is the program where communities identify plan and manage their own development projects in a very inclusive way. here is how the program works. one, irc or another facilitating partner approach is local elders, religious leaders and other powerful people in the village and asked them to endorse the program. once they have done that it opens a lot of doors inside a village. community members compared development plans and identify projects. elections are organized to create community development council with the responsibility of include projects. men and women vote and serve on the cbc. block grants from the ministry are calculated at about $200 per family with a maximum of $60,000 per community. number financial steps to help ensure the funds are not diverted. community members are informed about how the monies being spent through public support and large public meetings. monitoring committees are

established to promote transparency and accountability. cdcs hire local people to undertake and complete projects while monitoring their progress. over the past eight years the irc has helped to establish 1728 community development councils and districts and four provinces. the council has spearheaded over 3406 projects reaching more than 2 million people. the projects have ranged from the construction of roads, schools hospitals and irrigation systems to classrooms to learn to read or acquire a skill. the intangible benefits of the nfp are also meaningful for many participants it represents the first time they been able to play a role in determining how their needs are met. the opportunity to elect councilmembers and build consensus and power citizens is an exercise in good governance on the community level. funding is protected from corruption and communities are invested in nsp as the success depends on their choices and ability to deliver.

this level of buying is not only critical to the assessment of the project but also to their long-term sustainability. vienna stieg -- nsp program and print services and other areas. i also want to mention a second program also the partnership of afghan organizations. this approach is critical in buyers the ability to oversee assistance to over 30,000 people in southeast afghanistan following severe flooding in 2010. the irc now receive funding from usaid office of foreign disaster assistance to support the humanitarian response program. in this program that i is the or by turning to for afghan partner and how to help during a natural disaster. in business to the region and my work in afghanistan and washington have been impressed again and again by the quiet courage of the afghan people. many who have experienced terrible things yet they strive to build a better society. on a trip to afghanistan a few years ago i visited nsb programs in logar province and saw saw

different villages were investing their nsb funds. one committed to build a stone bridge over a creek that provided a shortcut to bring farm products to market and another is the schools for children in classes in tailoring for women. it is a great frustration to me that most americans never see evidence of these brave afghans. the media tends to report on roadside explosions to terrorist attacks and onto shins. these negative portrayals are far cry from impressive dedicated people i have met and who are among my colleagues. we must learn from models like the nsb and humanitarian response program to ensure a actions in afghanistan are rooted in the needs and desires of afghans and facilitate afghan leadership. we appreciate your broadening your research to look at how it paid agencies operate and the strength of the smart mac development approach. i hope you can develop attention to the afghans whose hard work undergirds everything i've talked about and explore how we can be better partners with them in securing a better future for all afghans. thank you.

>> thank you very much ms. richard and ms. cole you will finish up and then we will start questions. >> thank you mr. shays and members of the commission for giving me the opportunity to testify before you today. i'm director of intergovernmental affairs for the u.s. institute of peace, a congressionally created and supported federal institution focused on international conflict prevention and resolution. the views i express here today are my own. i was a lead writer for guiding principles for stabilization and reconstruction, the first doctrine for a whole of government and the whole of community action published by u.s. i.d. and the u.s. army in 2009. what i say to you today reflects some of what i learned during the rioting and setting of this manual. i will also discuss the unique role that congress gave to usip 27 years ago to act as a primary interlocutor between our military, our diplomatic and development agencies and u.s. humanitarian organizations working in zones of conflict. in fact i had the honor of cochairing the only regular contact group between these

actors in the u.s., the working group on civil military relations in non-permissive environments. the spark for this group of rows from issues in afghanistan. in 2005, interaction, the largest umbrella organization for ngos approached the state with concerns about encroachment by the u.s. military and humanitarian assistance in afghanistan. state usip would convene the relevant parties. the assistance activities conducted by the military were alleged to be blurring the distinction between armed forces and armed humanitarian and development workers, jeopardizing the safety of the ladder and forcing retreat to more secure areas. this shrinkage of humanitarian space ngos argued lead to less, not more help for needy people. our first meeting of this working group in march of that year was tense into mulch of us. but over time, we have learned

that regular dialogue often leads to better understanding, less duplication of effort, increased safety for americans on the ground, clearer roles and responsibilities and faster response in emergencies. this dialog produced an historic document released in july of 2007 by the u.s. department of defense, interaction and usip entitled guidelines for relations between u.s. armed forces and non-governmental humanitarian organizations in hostile or potentially hostile environments. i provided a copy to each of you of these guidelines. what we have learned all the of the dialogue is a simple fact. first, years before the u.s. military was on the ground in places like afghanistan ngos were likely to be there providing assistance in the worst conditions. and years after our forces had departed, u.s. ngos will still be there. humanitarian assistance and development is their business. the dramatic increase in profit making contractors working in

this business is muddying the waters, leading to legitimate questions about the accountability, role and conduct of these for-profit entities. second, the the widespread perception the major ngos, u.s. ngos operate on the fly without dinner tendrils is simply not true. the interagency standing committee under the auspices of the u.n. brings ngos together routinely to create and update guidelines for assistance operations. fear, the groundbreaking project has created a humanitarian charter and minimum humanitarian assistance. third, these fundamental block shows the line between humanitarian and development assistance is not a sharp one. and emergency health care is delivered, the involvement of the community, the on-the-job training of future health care workers, the infrastructure that is often built leads to the rebirth or creation of the health care system that might endure beyond an emergency

phase. that is development. and you can trace a path for the other sectors, sanitation, water, food, shelter and education. in afghanistan the dialogue has been halting and difficult. it has been jumpstarted by civilians in the u.s. embassy and the disadvantaged. has been led by the u.n. and then halted. it has been revived in some form by a new general assigned to isaf and petered out is rotations brought in new officers. at the imperative delivering humanitarian and development assistance does not stop. are working group have been focusing almost solely now on this afghanistan problem. time is growing short for the u.s. and its partners to show significant progress before transition targets are missed. delineating respective roles and responsibilities is critically important at this stage. the organizations most likely to remain in place and assisting the host nation for the long-haul are the ngos, both international and local, so it

is imperative we build the trust that is necessary, the trust we have found so fleeting to enable development and ongoing humanitarian and development systems to be successful. usip remains committed to fostering the dialogue that is necessary. members of our working group and the usip believe that our civil military working group model in washington has proven its effectiveness and should be replicated at some level in afghanistan to remedy the collapse and ineffective mitigation along the key actors there. we stand ready to assist in this process if congress per search usip. thank you very much and i'm happy to answer questions. >> thank you very much ms. cole. i would like to again thank all five of our witnesses. the way we are going to proceed as the commissioners will start with eight minutes and we will probably do a second round of eight minutes. we will see how that work and we welcome mr. tiefer.

he is usually the first one at a hearing so the four of us here were a bit concerned about his well-being, so it is nice to have you in because we thought he might not be here we invited mr. dickson are executive director who has participated in another hearing and he still invited to participate. so he will -- i will go second a lesson he will go left and we are going to start with commissioners are time. >> thank you very much mr. chairman. i also want to thank you all for coming here, and thank you for meeting with us in kabul as well. it was really very useful and it is the reason you are all here. ms. richard, nice to see you again and mr. mcgarry i was chatting with my friend the other night, cardinal mccarrick who as you'd know is in charge of crs, told them how helpful you again in kabul and what a pleasure it is to have you. this group in many ways is not usual for all ngos.

mr. karzai talked about getting rid of i think it is 300 corrupt ngos. he didn't have you in mine so there are ngos and ngos and that is the wonder of the things we do need to highlight and think about, how you guys do it right and what we do about those others, because that has not been mentioned at all. but i have a couple of questions about your relationships with the military. one of the messages that is, out of all your testimonies, including yours ms. cole, is that the military doesn't really get it right. doesn't really understand sustainability. it is in for short-term results, and there is a second message sometimes that is then subliminal and sometimes explicit that you don't really want to have too much to do with them, that you would rather stay neutral. so i have a couple of questions. you have all been in afghanistan apart from obviously -- for a long time. and you have had access you claim and you have met the needs

of the communities, but until 2001, you weren't getting very far. obviously you weren't under the taliban, and it was only when the united states and particular came in and the taliban was overthrown that you have had much more access. so, didn't the removal of the taliban open doors for you that were close before, or at least result in outcomes that you couldn't achieve before, or would you say that you were doing just as well under the taliban? i will just go down the list. >> no, certainly we would not advocate a regime change where we would be working under the taliban. are accessed during those times weren't limited, in fact probably more by the definition of responding to a humanitarian crisis in a certain geographic area. during that time, we were primarily a southern afghanistan entity dealing with refugee

repatriation and sources of that nature. in terms of actually progress, made during the taliban time certainly there were limitations during that time. we could not advance a development agenda that would highlight women's needs. we could not advance of the progress in the market that economy that did not really exist. >> will then let me just ask you, in that case weiss is so important to stay at not even arm arm's-length, body's length away from the military says they have created opportunities he didn't have? >> the opportunities they create we agree in fact in terms of the stabilizing force and promoting with their afghan partnerships while -- law and order. we certainly would agree that is an important mission of the prts and a back u.s. military were and they can advance that. the primary issue for us is that clouds and mist cole indicated, clouds the relationship between civilian assistance and military assistance.

we are in partial to the needs, with over response to all parties in our consultative process. you will see typically they prt responding to the needs of local power structures like the governorship, and those may not necessarily be community led. and then finally, there is the issue of security and safety and having a close relationship with armed combatant like a military force that frankly is too dangerous for a staff. they are high-value targets and our goal is to remain a deterrent through community acceptance strategies and not through force military. >> mr. klosson are you pretty much on the same page? >> let me add two points. one is that although we keep our distance and the military on the ground, we don't keep our distance from the afghan government and if you look leicester for example there were some flooding and humanitarian disasters. does the ngo community creates closely with the afghan government so it is really the

military and not governmental authority at large. i mean we do want to be corrugated and i think the second , and i wasn't in afghanistan prior to 2001, and certainly agree with mr. bowers on many of his points, is that i think the availability of resources for us to do development work has expanded considerably during that period and that is something that is enabled us to do more work in the communities. but again, to gain access to communities and our security is very much based on acceptance, not based on deterrence and not based on prevention and that requires us not to be seen as sort of the vanguard of a military force. >> mr. mcgarry. >> s/crs we established a permanent office presence in 2002 sigir point is well taken. for us since the other organizations is not a question of just the military and even its armed actors. some organizations have afghan national police guarding the guesthouses and offices.

we have full-time serous employees. communities, local commanders that offered to protect food distributions with their local gunmen and we are his decline and say no that is not the way that we were. for as the primary driver is the safety and security of our staff and we are be reviewed as a com com -- on whichever side that endangers us. and just to emphasize also we frequently have these conversations with the military in afghanistan and they are extremely understanding of our perspective of the need to keep our staff safe. they just want us to keep doing what we are doing and are very understanding of the need for that. >> miss richard. >> a few years ago i visited the prt in jalalabad and talk to some reservists that were there and i was so impressed by these guys because they were sort of the best of the face of the u.s. in terms of -- they came from different walks of life. day you know, clearly, you know

have taken up this role, at great personal risk. but it struck me, and they were very enterprising. they would talk to each other, e-mail back-and-forth to try to figure out different approaches to development in jalalabad. but it struck me they hadn't been trained for this role. that wasn't their original mission and it was something of a disservice for them to be thrust into doing reconstruction development work without the proper background. and, so it is not surprising to me then that they would produce projects that aren't sustainable because they weren't trained to do that. and also i think we should say also that a lot of our efforts to be impartial and provide aid based on need and not to be affiliated with any particular political or armed group is based on principle, humanitarian principles that go back to the mid-1800's and that have stood the test of time. this is not something that was dreamed up for the afghanistan

issue. so their attention sometimes when they come and brief on capitol hill, especially more and more staff i'm stuff i'm finding here are veterans of iraq or afghanistan and they don't want to hear that we are too good to work with the military. i assure you that is not the case. instead it is a very deliberate design to work independently and to work from the perspective of the communities and on their behalf. it is a very different mission than what the military has taken on. >> my time as a. >> your time is out. just like ms. coulter responds with as well. >> just a point of information also usip has been on the ground in afghanistan since 2002 supporting rule of law and community and national reconciliation activities. but, i think the existence of this contact group that we have in washington. >> excuse me one second because his time has expired. he has a specific question. could you directed to ms. coulter so there is consistency in? >> the question was very simple.

it was really two parts. one was, and mr. bowers answered in detail. the other panelists didn't really disagree with him that you know, they weren't very successful prior to 2001. the military therefore came in and open doors in ways that were just not possible for the ngos prior to 2001. and therefore, the question is, why this emphasis on neutrality given that the military has done what it has done and enabled the ngos to do exactly the kinds of things they want to do? >> well, you know again i was just going to say that i think that the existence -- the number of dod entities that are involved in our working group has shown there is a gracious appetite for them to understand exactly what the role is of the non-governmental organizations and afghanistan, and they clearly have learned over the last five years, i wouldn't say that they started there, that in order for them -- i agree with

you that in the beginning, they were in there, they were dislodging the taliban, they felt like they should conduct humanitarian assistance activities themselves, but they have learned over the last five years that really their lane is lane is not in that sphere. and that these actors can do it much more efficiently and with the local population. and as we transition out of afghanistan, they are increasingly looking to understand and in fact give the space to these non-governmental organizations to perform their activities because they know they are going to be there after they depart. >> thank you. so, now we pogo to commission a. >> thank you mr. chairman and thanks likewise to all of you for being here today. i want to tell you i commend each of you for the work that you individually do and your respective organizations do in and i had a very high regard for ngos in general and the role that they play in iraq and afghanistan and in particular

before preparing for this hearing but in the course of preparing for this hearing -- a tell you my esteem for you and your workers only increase. that is kind of the predicate for the first question i want to pass which is kind of an uber-question and both you miss richard and you miss cole set it up very well. given the commonsense principles that your respective organizations employ. i'm not just talking about the principles that relate to that document with a whole range of principles, local support in local buy-in which necessary leads to sustainability. the apolitical nature. remount working with the military or whether you were not being seen as our military i should say. the fact do you generally are there for years before conflict begins and you were there after conflict ends, the small amounts of money that are involved such that that money can be sustained and can be absorbed by the local government, your tendency to rely on local workers etc., all of this leads me to ask kind of the overarching question of

whether you are going, seems to me ms. cole and ms. richard, in the future as we transition out of afghanistan, iraq and as we look to future contingencies and there surely will be some, whether the whole of this development work out to be done by ngos and not the military, not by civilian united states united states government personnel and not by private for profit contractors. i would like each of you quickly to give me your view on that question. start with you miss cole. >> well i certainly think that there is a lot of lessons to be examined from both iraq and afghanistan. and, i think if we could take a break from our off tempo in these operations the width be well served by doing that. >> as quickly as possible. >> i do, i do think that we have all learned a lot about what the capabilities of non-governmental organizations are. i take your point that they are ngos and there are ngos, but the ngos we are talking about

better here before you today do exercise accountability for both their donors and the u.s. government and have a well-honed methodologies that should be employed in other missions. i think we should start with that as a starting point. >> mr. bowers? >> you know, i've i have also worked in kosovo before afghanistan and that is often the situation we run into u.s. military personnel who served in that operation as well who said why can we do it like kosovo when we are in afghanistan or iraq? the conditions there really aren't the same, so if you know not to dodge the uber-question of can -- what is the future model of the blended approach, it really is contextualize but certainly i would think many ngos see and value and understand there are times when the u.s. military in recovery, humanitarian assistance role has a place. there are operations that they can bring.

in pakistan during the floods last year there was certainly a role for the u.s. military to help the pakistani government and its people but then there was a clear role in what the ngos can do. >> sorry to stop you there but on the role you mentioned in pakistan with the military you are the one that -- wasn't the military ruled there largely a relief role? as opposed to its development one? i am talking about development and. in your judge and should the whole of development operations be done by ngos like the good ngos like you rather than about once? >> i think we have a significant role. yes. >> mr. klosson? >> i am tempted to say yes, but i think it actually requires to look at the capacities of different players bring to the table and you very nicely summarized the value-added that ngos can bring to the table particularly in the social sector linking of communities with governments. but i don't think you see a lot of this building roads and doing power plants in that type of thing which is also important for economic growth. so i don't think we have to take

on those kinds of projects and i think there still is still room for others. who should do it is the one you can do it best. >> who is that? >> you tell me. >> i don't know. i would think there are a lot of companies out there that are adept at building roads and building power plants. >> mr. mcgarry. >> could the gentleman yield? i think what we are trying to get out is, if the military does it instead of the contractors, does that then pollute i will use the word, development and then does that make you suspect? and, that is why we are trying to wrestle with it. if you have a preference, would you say the government -- the military should not be doing this work and anyway --. >> i think particularly on where the ngos have a value-added on the social sector cider think

ngos should be doing that in partnership with the host government and local authorities and not with the military. >> mr. mcgarry. >> so i don't have any access to comprehensive study of this and is anecdotal from my last three years in afghanistan and a year and a half before that in sudan. but i would say when we brought this paper it wasn't with the military and mind. it wasn't necessarily with private security companies in mind or or profit contractors or even ngos. the idea was we see so much bad development in afghanistan done across the board. their international ngos that do a terrible job and local ngos that do a terrible job. what i would like to see is that these principles be the metric by which anyone is evaluated for it. and so, in afghanistan there is a distinction between private contractors in the military. is often not a very meaningful one because private contractors operate as you know with heavy armored vehicles and so for so in the community's mind it is

fixable. >> let me try it out on that because i think it is a very interesting and how clients are. as you say i think it is the principles that ought to matter most here. but if the military -- is the military capable? are for-profit contractors to capable of taking his principles which are commonsense principles and being as effective at implementation is the good ngos are? >> i would say based on what i have seen, for long-term sustainable community driven and partial development principles laid out here as currently constituted, no. maybe in time, maybe in another five or 10 years with the emphasis that has certainly been given on these principles lately perhaps, but consistently what we see in afghanistan is that if you ranchers did in long-term impartial afghan driven transparent development, ngos are typically the way to go. that is not to say it is 100% one or the other but that has is than my observed experience. >> thank you and ms. richard? >> i was thinking about this

comparative advantage of ngos and you said they're ngos and their ngos and i think that was part of the impetus behind writing the paper what they pay six organizations came together. we take great pride in that. the large international ngos, less than a dozen of them deliver 90% of the funds mobilized by the ngo community locally. and i think probably the four of us are part of that doesn't. so, i agree with what mike klosson said and matt mcgarry in a response. >> it sounds like there is a consensus that an ideal world the whole of the arab government would be -- we are talking about good ngos as compared to the veterans and ngos about the principles we have all laid out here in today's testimony. i think that is helpful and i'm inclined to agree with that. second question, given the fact that ngos are generally perceived to be apolitical and not taking sides in the

conflict, and therefore presumably more accepted by the local populace and i think your experience each of you says indicates that is the case, i would think that the casualty rate among ngo and american personnel in your local contractors would be far, far lower than that forget i military, for civilian personnel and for american ex-pat or western ex-pat contractors in the theater. is that right? what is your casualty rate relative to theirs? >> speaking from the serous example sierra's example and again we work as a relatively stable areas across the central highlands so it is not a direct comparison with someone working in kandahar and helmand that would let mercy corps and the others that work and those more in stable environments. >> to those that we have had zero international fatalities of any sort and our time in afghanistan. we have had zero work related afghan fatalities. we have had some people who were

killed in roadside robberies and things like that but nothing to do with their affiliation with us or there were. >> do you think this has everything to do with the nature of how you are perceived? >> i think that has everything to do with the quality of our work is if we do bad work, then we can be as impartial as we want in communities will get sick of us and drives out. i think it has to do with the way we work, with a humble approach, the community driven approach and following these principles. >> thank you. if i could get a quick response from each of them and then i will stop. ms. richard. >> i am sorry, you say from our previous round? you got the conclusion that ngos were best at doing all of this because i want to just correct that. my colleagues think if you are building a ring road around afghanistan, irc is not the group to do it. but clearly, some of the things that we do like having 90% of our staff be afghan has got to be a benefit not just to the

sustainability of the program and in getting them done, and also the longevity of that and our security. so, if you look at the prts, you look at the military they are bringing in, and even the civilian state department a.i.d. they are bringing in young americans who are north american's don't. >> the language necessarily. some do. and it is just a very different profile than our hiring folks do who started out working with us when they were refugees. >> what is your casualty rate? >> we have lost seven staff. >> how would that relate to the military and to the private contractors? >> i think the percentage is actually bad. being an american aid worker is one of the top, it is the fifth most dangerous job in america today, so i think it is a rude little relative. it is a very dangerous job. >> okay and mr. klosson and

mr. bowers. >> i checked with the college before coming here today my understanding is we haven't lost any expats in afghanistan. we have had national employees have been held in things like that, but not --. >> and mr. bowers? >> we have lost out, local staff before in the past. most of our casualties lately have been natural causes due to avalanches and airplane crashes. >> but i'm talking about violence, being killed. >> no, our rate of ability to stay safe there is high right now. >> and this question would be relevant to you ms. cole. >> we have staff obviously on the ground in afghanistan and we have not taken any casualties. >> thank you very much. commissioner tiefer. >> thank you chairman shays. i've been preparing for this hearing and today is a learning experience for me. i was trepidation mentioned to

my students at the university law school that there is such a thing as grants in the legal world and i don't know enough to really teach it to them. i will know a little more after today. i also want to express my respect for chairman mike thibault but it is his insatiable appetite that i think that the way to the trip by chairman shays and commissioner zakheim which is has been our inspiration. at this hearing we want to know as you do from the ground up in afghanistan not just what is washington want. i'm going to ask this question if you ms. richard and a bit of an introduction. and it is about the principle of impartiality and what it could mean for the future. let's suppose that the current conflict in afghanistan doesn't end with an absolute victory one side or the other, but the taliban and that is a word i haven't heard much today so i'm bringing freedom to bring it in. taliban still in control of certain areas and and and they can be routed up of the central

government ends up in control of other areas. do you think it would be possible for your organization or a similar organization to play a stepped-up role in that situation, since as part of whatever truth or arrangement there is, one would hope both sides would want more development going on, but there is not a complete and of the conflict in that sense. would there be a large role in a post-conflict afghanistan in your organization is what i'm asking? >> i would hope that no matter what afghanistan, nrc will stay and continue working. we were in afghanistan during the taliban air and what we did was, we had supported schools for girls that were hidden away in people's houses. now, dr. zakheim is completely correct that there is a lot more afghan children being educated today than there were in those

times. and, you know we can reach far more than men do a lot more out in the open but i would like to hope that our folks would be able to continue working no matter what the government that shakes out over time is. >> let me ask, in your report, and i'm asking is for the panel but there is only one person who needs to answer. there's a case study under impartiality under helmand province. i learned a little bit about that and i'm curious if one of the organizations here did that, or if are there i can just talk to one of you about that? should i talk to you about it esther bowers? i was impressed, impressed that helmand province is a terrible place in the world, not just because of the conflict there. in fact less because of the conflict. it is the harrowing capital of the world. it is not just in our war

interest. it happens to be in our civil interest as well as russia and as well as iran and bare feet agricultural development by the teller read this i didn't think it was possible. how is it possible to have agricultural development? how do you answer this paradox? the taliban, their number one source of income is poppy growing and heroin. so helmand province is like a bank for them. how could anyone do agricultural development and helmand province? >> do it by the blended approach we talked about earlier in terms of where you have an approach of at the community level, it and you are espousing the ideas of the more you can demonstrate the value and legitimate illicit production that will meet the needs of the a household in that community, the more they will buy into that. you have to then couple that with the dilemma of the nature of work that the police are

under corruption to transport that poppy production you mentioned earlier before and often the legitimate government there has a stake in that. so, we often have a parallel need to not dismember the legitimate government, but to work from a community level up approach so you are essentially building development that doesn't have to exist at the government level but it can exist at the community level. the dilemma also is, not to be too technical, is are you going to do harm in that as well because it is in fact that irrigation canal you helped clean and fix. are you irrigating poppy land or are you irrigating wheatland? and really that is a very fine line on how much we can control and monitor that and a lot of it has to do with how much the local elder structure has bonded to the principles. if you provide a certain input, the expectations of certain output will happen.

we will be grown or corn will be grown and not opium and of opium is grown essentially were not going to be able to offer the same input you are after. so you are conditionally in a little bit of your development based upon what the understanding we can help them achieve. >> now i want to put together two questions for you ms. richard and for you mr. bowers. let's suppose there is a post-conflict situation and part of the price we say the taliban must stop detecting, the harrow when trade, and they want to impose something lawful on us like the government, must get rid of corruption. a high high-level brother and then blow is the ideal. could ngos play a role in that kind of higher-level? and could you provide enough, if funded enough, enough of that development to fill the place taken by the getting rid of the illicit economy so to speak in the alyssa government? >> well, i think that the

possible service that ngos could play in that kind of a scenario is the ability to reach so many villages and to reach so many people really at the ground level. and that is something that i know everybody involved in afghanistan is just really amazed by. and so, i think that holds a lot of potential but in order for us to work with those villages, we need you know to be able to travel there and to have it be relatively peaceful. >> the principle of impartiality >> also that there be a basic level security. >> mr. bowers, what you think about the possibility in a post-conflict situation? >> in reality, that scenario is occurring right now. in fact in many places in afghanistan where you have de facto taliban control of districts, most of our staff would already have some sort of dialogue with them in terms of how permissible will it be for us to do x,y and z.

there are there are many redlines their that we then have to morally deal with. if it is a program that focuses on maternal child health care how far will they allow us to work with women's groups etc.? you know, in terms of working at a higher level i think most of these agencies at this table would agree it is their goal to support the afghan government and their strategies that they said at a national the national level and that involves the ministry level. we do recognize that good community led development cannot be sustained without proper governance of some role and level and that we still need a functioning state organ. >> thank you. my time is up. >> thank you mr. tiefer. commissioner henke. >> just very briefly in response to question one of the things we have observed in the field as farmers of growing poppy because of any traditional experience in poppy, because they love it or the doors there is a culture of poppy growing.

they grow because it is generally profitable and they are extremely risk-averse and if you grow poppy a poppy dealer will advance you seed and tools and fertilizer on credit. one of the problems that we see with some of the stabilization programming which is cash for work driven, let's give these farmers cash for work right now so they don't grow poppy what happens is someone from the household comes up and takes the cash for work hard and while the rest of the family stays, gross poppy because they know they cash for work program is here today gone tomorrow. in answer to a question if there is a real emphasis on alternative livelihoods and development and things like that these principles again pulled where you have to be planning for what is us perform are going to be doing next year in two years and three years? where they growing the stuff in the first place in the farmers need to be confident that we are incredibly destitute, we are poor and have a family of 12 that i have to provide for and i'm not going to do your cash for projects and stop growing poppy poppy unless i know there is a plan for the year after and that is one of the bandages that ngos can bring.

>> thank you very much. commissioner henke. >> thank you mr. chairman. this colin your statement you mention mentioned the fact that private actors implementing development programs, private contractors are muddying the waters which lead to legitimate questions about the accountability role and conduct of these for-profit entities. could you teach just give us your response or general sense? on the contracting side, where we have in implementing organization for aid, implementing a project, do to be do we have the right public accountability mechanisms in place, the right oversight mechanisms? take a step out from your ngo role but in your experience working near and with private implementors for aid projects, do we have adequate oversight of their activities? do we have enough insight into

the outcomes from their projects to be effective, ms. cole, and others? >> well, i would say probably the umbrella answered your answer to your question is no. on experience site i will speak only on rule of law and police issues, we know when we tried to look at the contractors that are providing police and police assistance in afghanistan, that the information they hold is proprietary. you cannot get the proper information that you need to even understand and conduct any oversight. >> but what kind of information? >> budgetary information. what are their budgets? very simple questions, because they -- it is proprietary information. so it is difficult. we just did a study of police operations and most post-conflict states and we could not get any of that information.

you would argue bad is that development? i think it is development of the security forces that these people need just to operate. so i think that is a good example. >> these are private companies implementing public -- mr. bowers? >> i certainly do welcome more oversight. i think the nonprofit world even here in the united states is buckling under the issue of having clear oversight are there at the state or federal level and in afghanistan itself, there are a series of initiatives. >> what you mean by buckling under? i don't follow that. >> in terms, even from my experience, we often don't know how to communicate back to the public our accountability in terms of what we do with private money or certainly when government gives us a grant. but, in terms of oversight of contractors in afghanistan, i think the fault lines they are usually have been on the expedient nature of when they

had to complete something by date and their burn rates which causes a lot of -- it looks like short-circuiting in their own internal compliance systems and ability to regulate fraud and waste. >> what does that mean? what you mean by short-circuiting? >> often these contracts, and usually they are very high value contracts and under 12 or 18 months, and so really they are jumping through the hurdles to get these roads built and power plants built in quite a short time span. >> speed dominates? is there an accountability trade-off? >> we see that a lot and of course just the turnover rate in terms of their own oversight from usaid or at the embassy. >> mr. klosson? >> we certainly, as i mentioned in my remarks, have increased accountability and monitoring evaluation. i don't serve an independent view on the private side. >> okay. >> i think in answer to your

question generally know and i think it is partially a function of the nature of assistance mechanisms versus acquisition mechanisms. where there's a great deal of oversight and conversely usaid has a lot more control over a contract. they can change geographic locations. they can completely shake up the entire project can tell you to go this way or that way but a lot of the inherent nature of these contracts is that a lot of the success or failure is not judged on impact. is judged on how many metrics tons of seats redistributed not whether they got planted, whether they germinated or the word distributed through man who kept 75 cents for themselves. there is a lot less control of the -- does tend to be focused on impact that they teachers retain what they learn learn and so forth. >> ms. richard? >> you know, over several years now, contractors will

subcontracts subcontracts and everybody gets a cut along the way so by the time you get to where the project is being carried out there is little of the original money left but imagine you are much more expert about this than i am. what i fear for in washington is, when these big stories hit the news that you know, billions wasted in afghanistan, it undercuts our ability to raise money, and to continue holding the interest of americans in the enterprise that we are involved in. so, and i think it really bothers me and that is why i've tried to get the press to cover some of the stories. ..

>> we want to talk about it spent on this issue, i want to ask each of you come in the situation we're in, presently in afghanistan, what are the comparative advantages of doing,

let's call it development, call it stabilization, but what are the comparative advantages of doing development like work with a prt in the prt model and the prt space? any comparative advantages to that, mr. bowers? >> you've each talk about comparative advantages. >> i can .1 thing out which is the military, the american military representatives and troops were very frustrated that they were being expected to do everything. and they look to the civilian side of the government for help. they weren't getting it. and so now they have a lot more attention and resources from the civilian side, but our point is that's perhaps not the best -- >> there are too many governments around you. are you talking afghan government or u.s.? >> u.s. government.

i know in talking to him as a military they were very frustrated to the civilians were not showing up. now with the prts there's much more of a u.s. government departmental civilian presence from state and aad and others. we are challenging the whole approach. >> what is the advantage? i would like to if there is, one or two of them? >> i would say a comparative advantage for prts is the area of police training, mentoring. i don't think that's any of us on this panel would do. we have zero capacity to do that. if anyone is going to do it make sense it to be a. he which is down at the provincial level. i think for the longer-term we're talking about they don't have a comparative advantage. >> mr. klosson, any thoughts on the? >> i think i would agree with what mr. mcgarry said. made on the security side with the longer-term develop and

work, grassroots level that's done by ngos spent what i'm hearing is very limited. just in terms of development for prts, very limited. >> mr. bowers, do you want to say something? >> i think the comparative advantages they speak from authority and they represent at the very field level and authorized by that most people respect, at least illicit people we want to respect. so often make increase in stabilizing effects if led well by their local commanders with governments there that are failing. >> thank you. >> thank you. i would recognize myself. at first i would like a shorter answer, if you need to give an longer answer do it at your own peril. are you, ms. richard, involved in nation building, issuer organization involved in nationbuilding? who want to start?

mr. bowers, are you involved in nationbuilding? >> in terms of capacity building and building infrastructure for communities, yes. >> mr. klosson? >> if it's about strengthening afghan institutions, yes. >> mr. mcgarry. >> i would say in the same sense as we are in many other countries around the world, yes. >> i'm not going to disagree with those guys. >> how about ms. cole, do you think you involved in nationbuilding? >> i think usip is also doing. >> prts and bold in nationbuilding, ms. cole? >> i think prts are trying to be involved in nationbuilding. >> why do you think it's a difficult for us to say that we are involved in nationbuilding, ms. cole? >> us as a country? >> yes. >> because i think it carries a lot of baggage, and it is a term

that has been bandied about in many ways. and there's not a political consensus behind nation building spent i'm going to have to report a real bias but i love what you do. i cannot even be impartial, but i'm going to try. because i love the fact, i'm a former peace corps volunteer. i just have a general sense that you reach people, you listen to people, you are doing more. but there are criticisms, and one of them is how do we measure -- some of what we ask you to do is hard to measure even though you involved in capacity building. i mean, in empowerment, democracy training, institutional come in getting people to realize they can poke their head out of the ground and make a suggestion and it won't be ripped off and they can ask the neighbors what they think and you can build consensus.

that's something we intuitively do, but overseas in some places that foreign. so you do it. how do we measure it? mr. bowers, how do we measure it? >> with a very clear set of definitions of metrics on how we do that at mercy corps, in fact we are employing that now on a global level with all of our field missions. there's always done the reporting. donors like to see outputs, like to see results. rarely do they ask what the impact is. it's the impact that most of us with character will try to achieve because that is where you see the long-standing sustainable effect. and in many cases what you are doing is an election of a horizon of time that exceeds say, two years, you're not going to measure impact. you will measure results that are achieved. and whether or not the result stick, whether or not the results have changed behavior and population-based a fact he is the key dilemma of our industry. and all ngos are faced with that dilemma.

but in terms of how do we do at a very pragmatic level, we always create a set of indicators of how we're going to at least get result based. >> rather than at each of you give me a long answer, tell me where you would disagree our agree. so, give me an example of something that would be a major? >> one measurement right now, a very specific example is five years ago we create a microfinance institution in kabul to serve women through microcredit. so if that is not a self financing entity by 2014 we probably have failed. there are a lot of failures out there right now. so that measurement right now is at the institutional level measurement, ability to finance itself. >> say rule of law, how would you determine measurement on rule of law? >> in the culture of afghanistan, if the elder has not shot some of the family

member in an informal justice system, a rule of law measurement i would think is judicial system that is performing the way it is set up by constitution. constitution. >> how would you elaborate or disagree to the answer mr. bowers gave? >> i think one thing to distinguish between project and sort of a broader context, project specific that measurement. for example, health interventions. you are looking to increase coverage in how many more committee held flags are provide the coverage that was the case on the baseline. the broader perspective is can you then lead a committee and they can take it over. i think the broader impact of building self-sustaining institutions is something that's hard to measure, meet a number of years and you don't have the questions sometimes. the children have seen this in afghanistan were a number of years ago we're doing a lot of basic health package service provision, and three years ago

some of the local afghan ngos started taking them over so we no longer provided that. i think that's impact. >> let me ask you, mr. mcgarry and ms. richard to respond to cerp money. you know, thank goodness for people like petraeus that realized it wasn't just finding it in iraq, al qaeda and other dissidents, but terrorists, but to realize that they had to start to be involved frankly in nationbuilding. is there a danger that when the military does it, people been look at anything where development is taking place as a military instrument, then rather something nonmilitary? mr. mcgarry, you go first.

>> i think there is a danger in that i think it can be overstated. a lot of times communities of whom that i might is coming from the u.s. government. they know we are an american catholic organizations are there certain risks involved, the degree to which we stick to these principles is -- >> the catholic organization speech in a muslim country. i think with cerp, there is a danger that all development assistance gets painted as being somehow party to conflict but there's also the risk that if it is done, again not for development means, if it's done largely for force protection, if it doesn't work out well just as developer is done badly by an ngo or contractor it becomes that much more difficult to do if active development in that committee for the next organization, be an ngo or whoever. >> i do have a sense, and it's probably not standardized, but some in the military tried to involve community, try to use

the model you all use. ms. richard? >> well, if matt gives the kabul-based and i can get the washington, d.c.,-based answer which is we have a double standard in our programs and the funny the agency for national development for long-term development, done by development experts is tied up in all sorts of checks and balances. and that have been imposed by congress to prevent waste and fraud. and the cerp money is subject to none of the. >> you have no disagreement. thank you very much. i made my best effort to be aggressive. mr. dickson, our fellow commissioners have invited you to participate and we thank you. >> thank you, sir. and good morning to you all. i share a high regard for the work you and your personnel do around the world, and i mindful this morning as we meet here that one of the mandates for this commission is to focus on

waste, fraud, and abuse. and in preparing for this, mr. bowers, i read your statement for record, and i'd like to bring up one example that you cite, but then i would like to then have you respond and then the other witnesses respond as well. in this example you are referring to southern afghanistan 2008 where usaid awarded the global development alliance awarded a to $.1 million grant for agricultural development. and then subsequently u.s. government awarded a $300 million grant to another organization for agricultural department in the same area. and in that case it ultimately led to the payment of farmers to work in their own fields. so in that sense the u.s. government was competing with itself for limited resources of nongovernmental organizations. and we found in other places that competing programs didn't

continue to waste and inefficiency. the question is how do we avoid that? in your opening remarks you talked about the right actors and the right goals. you talk about aligning funding with those. the question is who does that? how with ngos and with usaid and the military and these kinds of contingencies, who is responsible for kind of like the architecture, the strategic plan and making sure that hopefully all the arrows are pointing in the right direction? >> in the ideal world it would be the host government did at the provincial level or the capital level depending on the complexity of that environment. afghanistan all girls are all essentially. entrance of into coordination pashtun most would find in a developer context are simply extraordinary difficult to accomplish. i mean, the panelists here represent organizations that routinely meet, totally share some of that.

in some cases the u.n. believes that cause with the government is either too weak or nonexistent. and in some cases we have seen in other places you may share that information with a military force, such as a prt. often we would share that with the prts. frankly, there are so many actors of competing interests, and contractors are one of these actors that unless they complete that deliverable they will not be reimbursed. they don't care the end of the day if the farmer has been disincentivize to do something voluntarily because that's a data point they have to accomplish. so, the u.s. officer may not even be aware that mercy corps already has a pre-existing a.i.d. program to that initiative here so i would say there is a donor requirement that they collaborate and coordinate that, but again, like afghanistan where you see exorbitant amount of money really flowing into only three different regions of the

country, it's extraordinary difficult to crystallize who is in charge. the governor's office is either incapacitated or lacks the ability, and then often lacks the sense of how to get all those actors together. >> mr. klosson? >> i would agree that the afghan government could take that on, that's the place to do. it sounds like it on the part of u.s. government is not taking place and it would seem to me that you actually need sort of an interagency mechanism, both in the field through the mission, and also back here in washington to make sure that the work that is being done is a line and certainly you don't have that duplication. >> mr. mcgarry? >> i would agree with mr. klosson. at the village level it's basically impossible for us to duplicate someone else's efforts because these are small villages largely in the middle of nowhere and we know what is going on and are in regular contact with the villages. in the example you cite that's a

kabul-based decision that we don't have any influence over. intergovernmental, enter donor coordination communications would be great, would be helpful to resolve that sort of problem. >> ms. richard? >> i don't really have anything to add. >> ms. cole? >> i would only say that after five or six years of trying to build an interagency capability in united states that we are far from achieving any kind of predictable way to bring our agencies together, let alone lash up with a nongovernment organizations and the host nation. it's a critical gap, and it will continue to plague us as we go forward in any country that we can think about that is in disarray. libya planning is going on at the moment, and is experience in the same kind of disarray that

we've seen in other places. so it's really a serious problem. >> thank you. my second question focuses on time and we've heard a lot of discussion this morning with regard to the long-term and short-term and the value that ngos bring for the long-term their contingencies by definition are supposed to be short-term, and yet in iraq and afghanistan we find a tremendous amount of time has passed. for the future though in terms of planning resources for contingencies, the role of the military, the role of usaid and the role of ngos, how do we as a country plan for and prepare for short-term contingencies, how does that change the equation with regard to your roll versus that of the military and anti? i would just as to go down the line starting with ms. cole. >> you ask a difficult question. if you see the guidelines that we produced in this working group that you will see we

recommended that the into action, the umbrella organization for ngos, had some kind of ability to interface with our combatant commands as they are preparing for the operation in a very short term. and so that's one recommendation. it's not going to solve everything. we do need a more predictable interagency process, and i think that the military and others have recognized that they can just plan the abstract. they need to consult with the organizations here and elsewhere and has some very, very specialized skills, and will allow them to not have to repeat and duplicate their skills. >> thank you. i have just a minute left of my time so perhaps not all but if anyone has a comment, ms. richard? >> you know, and international affairs budget there's a couple of accounts that are supposed to be used for responding to contingencies internationally. one is there's a regular refugees assistance account, at

the state department and is also an emergency refugee and migration assistance account. that can be captive and with an unanticipated wreckage he crisis happens. at the agency for international development there's the fun for the office of foreign disaster assistance, and that tends to get oversubscribed because there's only one account. so that is used for promoting disaster prevention and readiness overseas. it's the first thing that usually goes out the window. responsibility, response to natural disasters, responding to complex humanitarian emergencies such as in afghanistan. i talked about in my testimony that funding has been used for the humanitarian crises in parts of afghanistan, and also a.i.d. takes the lead on internally displaced persons all around the world. in my mind the odd to be more funding for contingencies, but as you'll note that usually the first thing cut from the budget. >> thank you.

>> go to dr. zakheim. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. ms. cole, you mentioned libya. frankly, part and the fact that our commission is thinking about lessons learned for the future, not just in afghanistan and iraq, to me that's a nightmare. we decided to go into libya very, very quickly. we still haven't decided how we're going to stay in libya, and now you're talking about planning. i'd like to hear from you whether this government, this administration and our government, has in fact change its processes at all in terms of the kind of issues we're discussing as it looks at libya. and i'd like to hear from each of our other panelists whether you've been brought into this conversation at all or whether, once again, we're going to find ourselves just doing it catch as catch can. can you talk about libya please? >> i'll just talk about this a little bit that i know.

you know, we have brought together an array of organizations under an interagency planning committee at the white house to do regular planning. they are, they have been brought together. they are looking at various sectors, seeing where the united states might bring resources to bear. you know, it's, i think it's a very imperfect process. there is no lead -- >> is a better than it was the last time around? you've been in the government for a while. >> i think with each we get a little better. >> you mean each contingency? >> with each contingency. but i think the problem remains that we really do not have been the lead actors, and get we're talking about bringing together assets from across the government. >> mr. bowers, do you think there been any lessons learned with you guys involve? >> yes, i think we are involved.

in fact, we have teams in libya as we speak. >> i'm talking about government planning. >> government planning i would agree with ms. cole that i think at the washington level there's always, you know, seemingly another interagency that seems to be improving it are at field level which is what i represent, very hard to see right now. >> mr. klosson? >> at the washington level i think it has been average. we saw that in the case of contingency planning for south sudan were both the state department and office of disaster assistance reached out to the ngo community, compared notes and something similar i think larger with the office of foreign disaster assistance occurred with regard to libya. we are on the ground in that area. >> mr. mcgarry? >> i'm afraid i was all afghanistan all the time in to a couple of weeks ago. >> are you in libya at all? >> we're working on both sides of the board i don't know to what extent they have been involved in the planning. >> ms. richard?

>> we sent teams to the egyptian side and a tunisian side of the border, and the parts of the u.s. government have been in touch with our teams. libya is an odd situation right now because there have been a lot of refugees flowing over the border. the people who have come have been, workers from third countries going back to them. we did do a little help on that, but there is a puzzle why we are not seeing more refugees from libby. we have been contacted by the nato forces to make sure that they don't inadvertently bomb us. >> thank you. let me switch to something else. several of you mentioned that contribution and you talked about the fact that needs to be more coordination here with respect to afghanistan. let me ask you this though. several of you talked about success in education programs and agricultural programs. how do i know and how do you know who's behind the success?

is a you all, which organization is it, is it cerp in spite of everything? how do you figure that out when you go and say i think it was a number two-and-a-half million kids in school. is that due to any organization or what? >> i do think anybody claims credit for the education successes in afghanistan so -- if you've heard people boasting about i think is probably a lot of -- >> would that include cerp? >> what i would suggest, and one of my colleagues who was killed by insurgent in afghanistan taught me a lot about this in terms of education. is that education in afghanistan is more than building a school. so a lot of groups have taken credit for building school buildings. but education in afghanistan is often getting the support of communities to send kids to school, having female teachers so that girls can go to school because they are not supposed to

go if there is a man as their teacher. having a curriculum that is real so that they are not just going through the motions and having parent teacher associations created so that is a continued involvement in the school the way we have in the u.s. so this gets back to the question about benchmarks. you can count up how me school builders have been built, but what you want to do is test to see if children are learning in afghanistan. and i think in some of the places where we have been working, these community-based schools, there are no other, there is nobody else there to take credit. so i think we have made a contribution. >> mr. mcgarry? >> yes. we wouldn't take credit for the -- we'll take credit for the stuff we can measure and quantify ourselves. i know in our case for the education achievement over the last five years we've helped 13,000 children, 60% gross achieve a primary education. that's part of a consortium with care. that number goes up to 110,000

across the country. i think this gets back to chairman shays questions earlier about abstract heart of impact question. one of the ways in which we do it, which is very straightforward is we ask people and we ask them over and over. we ask the same people and we write down whatever it is they tell us. sometimes looking at these four principles we violate some of them are so. we don't always get it right all the time but when we get it wrong, we ask and we try to take corrective action. >> so let me modify the question. doesn't try to get get in your way when you try to do these sorts of things i don't think passionate we don't access the cerp money. >> but those who are doing cerp, out of the prts who also get involved in the exact same activities, i mean, we have people teaching farmer techniques coming out of iowa and indiana and places. do you find that those kinds of

activities crossed wires with your activities? >> what i would say is i don't know for sure that we've encountered in the community level work that we've been doing. where we to encounter them, i think our impartiality could be called into question. >> mr. bowers? >> yes, i have at times. in helmand we were privatizing veterinary field units for many years. in fact, you know, often commanders arrive and want to do something very quick and meaningful for the population so they do what is called that cap mission. they provide free vaccination for able to so you essentially destroy the market you are trying to build a. >> ms. cole, what is your impression of? >> what i would add is how would we know? how would we know who is responsible for what? what is attributable to what? we simply do not have a system to extract lessons from the field to the military has an incredible system. based been incredible so to

understand exactly, or the try anyway, to understand what leads to what. we don't have that on a civilian site. >> let me point out, i think that is fair, and i would simply point out, i know i have overrun my time, if we can't measure the we can't really say and much of an explicit case like mr. bowers, that the military gets in the way necessary. you just don't know. military does to education. it does to agriculture. so i'm not sure, you said earlier that in effec that, in e military gets in the way very often, and you just told me you can't measure. how do you square that circle? >> we have case studies. we have some evidence but in terms of a whole string of case studies that doesn't exist. i think we can extrapolate from experiences in various sectors about cerp folks have spent so it is more tentative than a firm conclusion? >> yes. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just want to start with a

quick editorial. i think we've had as commission 23, 24 carries, something like that over the course of our tenure. i think this is the most important one we have had. i hope very much that our staff is taking note of everything that has transpired here, and i know they are doing that. i think there's some tremendously important lessons to be captured here, and i just think of that money that could be saved. more as important as that is and that is very important especially with these tight budgetary times, even more important allies that can be saved. and the likelihood of our increased stability to achieve america's strategic objectives in war zones. ..

>> if anybody disagrees with that for the record, weigh in. >> we'll give him two seconds. >> yeah. >> i think the military has the security sector at large. >> okay, fair enough. secondly, i wanted to follow-up on mr. dickson's line of questioning. you mentioned, ms. cole, that usip was # called upon to play

this disconviction role in absence of anybody educational doing, and you gotterred the -- gathered the parties and that's commendable, but i wanted to know if anybody else has comments on it. also, we want to reach out to relevant actors, relevant parties in this enterprise with regard to your views on the recommendations that we've already made, and you know, we're already out with another interim report a couple months ago, and a recommendation we made goes todd issue of more coordination in the field and washington and among the recommendations establishing a dual headed, official one person, but dual headed to have an omb function to have the sources provided of which obviously development is a big part, and also that persons plays a role at the security counsel. do you have any thoughts about that recommendation? >> i think i would want to

reserve judgment and look at that report in more detail, and there's been a lot of recommendations about various entities that we should construct in the u.s. government. i think there's one floating around to be introduced on the house side, so i think each one should be looked at individually. we -- just in terms of the role, in terms of decon knicks, usip provides a safe space for the both entities to come together. we don't deconflict, but they do monk themselves. >> sure. >> i think it's a very, very important role to be kept and preserved. >> fair enough. anybody else have quick comments on that particular recommendation? if not, please submit for the record your views on recommendation 11 in our last interim report. third, questions to you, ms. cole. this is neither here nor there i suppose, but i'm spreeinged by --

intrigued by it. i would not think there's daylight between the views you expressed and those of usip officially. is there? if not, why did you say that? >> usip is not an organization that advocates for specific policy so, you know, it is here in my individual capacity that i come before you today. my views, obviously, are a result of the work that usip allows me to do, so there's a direct correlation. >> okay. also you referenced this i think in your statement. i know that the funding of usip has been under attack recently and seems to be the work of the organization is more important now than ever. can you just quickly give us the status of things in that regard? what's the likely heed of you -- likelihood of you continuing? >> thank you very much. our funding was zeros out under hr1 in the house of representatives. it was preserved in the

democratic senate alternative, but, of course, you know now there's a deal. we expect to learn what our number is today or early this week. we have been very gratified by the support of defense, mill fair -- military colleagues, departments here and others in support of our mission so we hope to continue that mission for the american people. >> i do too. another question. we kind of touched on this in a number of rounds, but i don't think we drawed it out explicitly with your views. whether stability has to proceed development for development to be sustainable. are we wasting money and putting contractors at risk by working in more dangerous areas? it seems to me there's number of successes in dangerous areas, what's your views? anybody? >> i think there's a continuum

so if it's an all-out battlefield where you are held up in a compound, we don't do that. if it's an area that's unsecure, you but yo work access to communities and part of works to be done, we will do that. in afghanistan, we are in some of the more unsecured provinces as well as places in the north. i think -- if it's an all-out pitch battle, we are not there. if it's insecure and we gain access to the community, and they want assistance, we work in those areas. it's not clear cut, black and white what stability follows development. >> makes sense. what about the others? do you basically agree with that? >> yes. >> yes, mercy corp. does too. >> one question is we talked about the commendable fact, it seems to me, that the vast majority, 98% is the figure i

heard from you ms. richard, from the applies on the ground are local afghan officials in afghanistan, and has been said it can be the case that there's a large percentage of local nationals employed by contractors, by aid, ect., ect.. can you tell us what differences, if any there are in terms of labor practices, pay differences, insurance issues, safety, moral, ect.? what's the differentiating factor would you say? any of you. >> i mean, in our experience, you know, we tend to hire people fairly young. i mean, a lot of our staff we don't pay as much as a contractor or the u.s. government so people come to us often straight out of college. we have people who came to us,

first job back in 2002 and are still working with us because we place an incredible emphasis internally the same as externally in capacity. we have staff who, you know, english teachers on site for cooks and our cleaners. we offer everybody university education, we take care of people when they get sick. we have unlimited health care services, and so we are going to be around, we hope indefinitely. the same reason communities work with us and take tremendous risks to guarantee our safety and secure, our staff takes significant factors of three or four pay cuts where they could walk next door for me money because they know we'll be around and do the best to take care of them as long as they are with us. >> thank you, mike. ms. richards, quickly respond. >> i don't think our staff benefits part of the global

enterprise, and we've also had examples of, for example, our national solidarity program that i described is an example of community driven construction. we had a rwanda staffer go over in 2003 and 2004 to get that started. we had others go to indonesia to talk about this type of approach to projects, so they -- our staff has the ability to become international staff, and to make a contribution in other situations. >> thank you. >> thank you. mr. teifer? >> ms. cole, part of your enterprises is an elaborate network of experts in several ways. excuse my curiosity. there's aspects on which you border on government contracting in form of budgets and

transparency and so for. does usip take an interest in government contracting in post conflict situations? >> we take an interest in looking at that issue? >> yeah. >> yeah, in fact, we have looked at that issue both from the context of our military working group, but also in our business stability operation program. we looked at the issue of contracting for, particularly in rule of law, aspects for many, many years. i'd be happy to share with you the results of our work. >> i would appreciate that. i'd appreciate that. let me press on to this not leslie a post conflict situation, but i'll ask -- i'll start with you. in terms of the type of projects

several of you mentioned, roads, power, which currently are u.s. contracting, the future plan certainly of aid is that with enough capacity building by the afghan ministries they would take over some aspects of roads, power, and this becomes more and more an in-country thing, and not a u.s. government thing, but an afghan government thing. do you anticipate working with it or still in parallel? you know, you do sort of agriculture substance and things like that and leave the what we call the big things, but become the smaller things, smaller roads, local distribution of power, becomes smaller things. do you take a role, or is that still somebody else's sector? >> well in the last few years there's been a policy in the

state department that i believe was prompted by the desire to avoid establishing parallel systems. in both pakistan and afghanistan, but starting with pakistan to bypass national ngo's like asheses and go directly to the government or to local ngos, and we felt that this is, you know, over the long term, the ideal to have governments provide services to their own people, but in both cases, the governments were not ready to do that. in both cases in pakistan and afghanistan, and that we were in the midst of programs that, instead of being parallel were actually raising standards through stiffening the spine if you will, creating a skeleton to support local development. in the national solidarity program, we are working with the ministry at the village level. it's not a parallel system.

it's intrinsically linked to the ministry, so there's another program that was mentioned, the psa program, an education program, that is coming to an end not because we can't continue to run it and do a good job at it, i think we could, but the sense it's time for the ministry of education to step forward and take that on even though everybody tells me they cannot take that on. we have talked to ambassador mark grossman and folks as usip about this, but the pressure to shift right now is quite dominant. >> let me ask mr. mcgary or mr. bowers further question on this. when we oversee electrical projects in afghanistan, we discovered this was quite recent that aid has an ambitious program to turn -- build the

capacity in the afghan public utility and turn it over to the utility to build that transmission line between can hair. you are informed about national institutions. are they ready for this, or is this way down the road before they can take this step over? >> i think it varies very much from institution to institution. i think mrd is one of the ministries that is mentioned a lot of being of high capacity and national public health,ngo's partner directly with them and have success with, and partner and for example anne mentioned it's not a question of the capacity of the ministry, you know, it's a question of how that handover is done and so capacity building may be the most overused phrase in afghanistan, a place filled with

jargon of all sort. when we talk about capacity building, we talk about starting today for something we hope to accomplish in three to five years. when a lot of other people talk about capacity building, it's a process of starting today for a turnover we're going to do in two months or six months or on the outside of the year, and that's what happened with psa. it's a sustainable project that could have been handed over smoothly in a year if we started planning for it a month ago. instead, we planned a month ago to hand it over today. i think there's, you know, to answer your question, is varies from ministry to ministry depending on personnel and the sophistication of the work they are doing and depending on what level of capacity strengthening they had in 10 years and depends on how the u.s. government sides hands things over and whether it's here you go, best of luck with it. >> i'm going to keep going in trying to build on that with

either mr. bowers or mr. mr. klosson. because the sense of the goal of the u.s. effort is stability operations and stability soon enough to turn over security in 2014 and pull the troops out in 2015, we're being told that capacity building is going to turn so fast that that timetable is possible. do you have some sense that that timetable is unrealistic? >> it is most certainly unrealistic especially because it's tied to different agendas and not so much on the agenda of the right institutions handling that type of handoff. if you look at the telocom industry in afghanistan which is most part private sector led, that does not require a lot of interventions from a community. clearly, we're in the private

sector can lead, it should lead. where the government should regulate, it should. i think on some of the signature projects, because design of them were initially done in the fog of confusion on when and how long we should be there, often they are not -- their exit strategy is very poorly conceived. >> i would say that capacity building needs to be sort of evidence-based and sort of baseline driven rather than deadline drefn, and the example given on the education program i think is a good one. i think we all would agree at the end of the day sort of success represents afghan ministries doing what they should do to carry out the responsibilities. how you get there is a very different question, and you can't force the pace. i mean, you can't give someone 12 years of education in two monthings. >> okay. my time is up, but this has been very informative. thank you. >> commissioner henke, thank

you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. one of the things i'm continually amazed with it when -- is when we drop in with large development programs, a billion for surp, 50 million for this and 50 million for this which in the world of grants and ngos is massive on a news scale. what i'm amazed with is we don't to be surprised that we're changing the very thing into which we're dropping all that money, and it seems to me that the phrase you use in your testimony, mr. bowers is local absorbtive capacity. what i want to do here is just open up a dialogue with you. you have a great example in your testimony about absorbtive capacity and sail, and it's in the section that talks about the comparative advantages of grants and what i just want to do is set it up and unwind you and see where you go with it. mercy core received a grant

through usaid, the global alliance, to increase grape and pom granite production in afghanistan. three year grant in 2008, $2.1 million. you said the project took root, and i guess that's a well-chosen phrase. [laughter] it was beginning to show results. r5 00 farmers trained, grape production increased by 30%, and farmers found due markets for their projects. then, mr. bowers, then a what took place? >> well, then our focus on stability in kandahar province happened essentially. inadd inventoryially by design or action, a little hard to tell, the u.s. government decides it wants to solely invest quite a bit of money in a province that frankly represents more development aide than that

province should receive. >> the u.s. government who? what agency? >> us-aid. >> okay, they awarded a $300 million contract, i suppose. >> i think that was a cooperative agreement i think. i could check on that. >> it was. okay, so $300 million through some mechanism to another organization, and then what unwound? >> well, essentially, you know, money comes into the system, and they lack the ability to understand where in these key terrain districts which is the latest terminology now in afghanistan to focus these funds into, and essentially you have a finite group of farmers, a finite group of associations to work with, and so you can see the pilot effect happening, and whether than that group going back to the donor saying it's covered here, let's go somewhere else, the mandate is key trained district, so many outputs by end date to show we're a part of the

stablization process. >> they had an effective spend rate of $1 million a day? effectively little to spend it on. so what happened? your statement talked about it, but can you talk about it on the record for the benefit? >> like anyone who's engrossed with getting rid of money fast, taxpayer money in this case, you make very poor decisions based upon that time frame allowed to you, so, again, rather than the normal system of going back to that donor, that u.s. implementing agency saying we need to redirect, where else can we do that? you know, they are locked into that area, locked into that farmer because it's built into their agreements, built into that contract if it's a contract. >> right. the organization began to pay farmers in the program to attend trainings and work in their own fields. both activities that local people did at no cost to the usg

under our aid-funded program. since local farmers then prefer to receive payment, no surprise, mercy corp. had to refocus the project further up the marketing chain. talk about the example that you lead to the conclusion it creates a "contractor mentality" can you talk about that? >> in essence, we demonstrate more flex the because -- flexibility because we had less money to try to burn on it. you work up the value chain of trying to leverage different resources, so in this case it's finding the right buyer in europe. it's forming the relationship with technical assistance with those farmers and on how they package the project, ect.. the contractor mentality steeps into us as well. >> what does that mean? >> it means we have a deliverable, the

performance-based management systems that we encourage in the cooperative agreements as well becomes essentially, well, produce that result. does it matter if the impact, in fact, isn't a sustaining impact? in this case, you know, that farmer is paid now to do something where previously we didn't have to pay that farmer. >> uh-huh. >> the contractor-type mentality, a contractor typeically is not worried about that, but a deliverable is important. >> in the context of the example from kandahar prosince, -- von vines -- province, you say they were focused on the highest bidder rather than sustainable outcomes. >> correct. this analogy could be used in other sectors where vouchers are given out for seed provision or an input so the mentality then in the local community and in the private sector is why work on market-based system which

we're trying to achieve a sustainable development market when money's just going to come here anyway? the incentives are very low now then for farmers and groups to actually deal with these issues on their own risk basis. >> yeah, sure. >> are you saying in effect that although our government regardless of parties pushes free enterprise and in fact we create a socialistic system? >> typically you find that in post-relief environments. there's subsidies flowing in because people want to do it on an expeed yat basis. the mentality is the beneficiaries can't pay, but many in afghanistan have the ability to pay. right now the donor community and other donors as well, not just the u.s. government, are certainly pushing off the future of a privately led sector that

can capably deal with the issues. >> okay. thank you for the answers, mr. bowers, and thank you all for being here and for the organizations you work for and you represent. i applaud you for your work and the hard work the people do that are in the field. thank you very much. >> thank you commissioner henke. we'll give the executive director, bob dickson the opportunity to ask questions. >> thank you. in our interpret report to congress, we focused on some recommendations that dealt with contingency contracts, offices at state, and defense, and even on the joint staff, the greater emphasis and focus on contingency contracting. ms. cole, question to you, but i ask the other witnesses also respond. 2342009, you -- in 2009, you testified before the subcommittee for oversight and investigation, and at that

time, you were asked to comment on an inner agency coordination cell at the department of state that became known as the office of the coordinator for construction and stablization with the idea to replace the ad hoc with deliberate planning and execution in the areas of reconstruction and stablization. could you please give me your assessment to what extent that office had to its desired effect? >> as you may be aware under the diplomacy and development review, that office is now absorbed into a larger bureau. the bureau for civilian stability operations. you know, that, that has been an experiment and progress. they have made some headway, with the help of the military in large part, established a

planning mechanism, and they have been able to exercise that in a couple of different scenarios, most importantly in afghanistan. they helped staff the last signal planning exercise that occurred there under general mcchrystal. they have also developed a lot of standing agreements with agencies throughout the u.s. government to bring them into the civilian response core and hopefully deploy them. i think where this enterprise has fallen short is in the deployment. they have not been able to deploy whole government inner agency teams that can really execute what the united states needs them to execute on the ground, and it is -- i'm very concerned actually that at this time these other, some of the other agencies might indeed pull out of the agreements because of the lack of progress.

if you are going to send a team to sudan, you want border experts from the department of homeland security on that team, so this is -- this should not be a state department usaid corporate exercise. it's a whole of government exercise. i'm concerned that that is not what's in the offing right now. >> uh-huh. thank you. any of the other witnesses on that particular point? really looking for how that office fits in or now the new aves of stablization fits in with the solution we're talking about today and whether or not there's a specific model either through qddr or other initiatives out there you know of that take the principles you outlined in your papers and bring it into a sharper focus or initiative to help further that objective. do you know of anything out there, mr. klosson?

>> just one point. there's the question of optimal organization and how we do this. i think what our paper also talks about is the question of strategy and how do you get the balance right between some of the octoberives that the u.s. has and then you have the metrics to drive the objectives. i think even if there's proper organization, i think if we don't get the strategy piece right, we may not get the result we're seeking. >> ms. richards, do you have a comment? >> yeah, i think that some of the initiatives you see happening inside the civilian agencies with the u.s. government, may not be fully developed or perfect yet, but what they do help point to are the gaps that they're trying to fill, and the gaps are real, so for example, all of our organizations have struggled with the gap between relief, aid, and longer term development, and when done well, you actually lay the ground work

for longer term development at the time you're responding to a crisis or a natural disaster, yet our, at the u.s. agency for initial development, at the state department, these things tend to be handled differently, and it's clear to me there's a need for cross cutting both on terms of looking at money to cut down on duplication and waste and also in terms of roles and responsibilities. >> uh-huh, thank you. the next question i have deals with the comment that mr. klosson made earlier about strengthening and monitoring the programs overseas, particularly the long term programs. you also mentioned transparency, and i'd just like to take a moment to ask each of you how do you do that? who is spoom for that? -- responsible for that? is there a standard you adhere to to ensure your strengthening

and monitoring in a transparent way so the funding flowing into your organization is well spent and accounted for? >> well, we actually, it's an area that over the last number of years we've put a lot of emphasis on, so we have an office here in washington whose job it is to strengthen and say the chirp's ability to do monitoring and evaluation, and each of the major programs that exist in save the children, i oversee the emergency response. we have -- we have a monitoring and evaluating person so if we feel a country program needs additional capacity to proper by carry out that responsibility, we send people out from head quarterrers to build the capacity of the staff to do evaluation. each of the programs, there's a methodology, and each of the programs does go through a process as its implemented. i think it's -- i think if you look where we were say 5-10 years ago, we as an agency have

come a long way and we much more regularly deploy on the ground. >> mr. mcgarry? >> yeah, in the country we face scrutiny and autoditted once a year by the government of afghanistan and autoaudited every 2002 years by the internal group. we are reel vaunt to the line industries and we work with ministry of education representatives, joint monitor visits to farmer demonstration plots. we are checked up on by the ministry of finance and economy. we have monitor and evaluation and director program quality and then we have full time permanent in-country tech nick call positions for the management work, and head programming and coordinator who get their hands dirty making things are the way they are supposed to be.

>> can i ask either of youhouse does the monitoring of our country here over what you do compare with monitoring the other countryings have for your work when you're getting assistance from other countries or the world bank, for example, are we better or worse or the same? very briefly. >> i mean i would say this is what i hear from the country directers is that there's some -- there's a lot more done for u.s.-based donors than there are for others. >> even within the u.s. government we can't say or within usaid it varies department to department. we have a supportive relationship with the office of agriculture who monitors us rigorously with some of our other european donors. they may be very hands off and others may be very hands on. >> just one more very brief comment doing with thanking you

again with all of the things that you do, but also for taking the time to write a paper that stimulated a lot of discussion and ultimately led to our interest today, so thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. dickson. the full commission would also want to tell you that that paper was obviously very interesting and provocative, and well-written. i have four areas i would love to cover in my eight minutes. first to say that i was mostly in iraq when i was a member of congress, and i went 19 times, and the first four times i went with ngos of the military. they had to sneak me into the country, and we were at the gate and dod said don't let the congressman get in. it was april 2003, and the same person said, i can't hear you, i can't hear you. i was trying to break into iraq. it was very fun, but i learned more in those four times than i

learned in the other 14 times i went, and i really believe had our government been on the ground like you all are on the ground, we would have done things much differently, spentless money, and we would have ended that war much sooner because we wouldn't have made the mistakes we made had we been there. , one of the things i'm pretty convinced of is you focus on what folks want, a question i'm now asking though is what happens if folks want is something they shouldn't have? they don't always get it right, and do you step in or allow them to make the mistake and say if we started the process, we have to let it work. ms. richard, i'll start with you. you can't ask somebody else for the answer. [laughter] >> i don't know the answer though. i don't feel i should make things up. >> if you don't have an answer, you don't have to answer.

mr. mcgarry? >> it's striking a balance there depending on how egregious. >> sometimes it's not a good idea, let's do something else? >> in everything we do, we try not to be overly prescriptive. in my experience, you know, we will sometimes go to community and say, it's worth mentioning the first thing communities always want is security, and we have to explain that's not who we are and do. we can work at peace building, but the first priority is always security, and even in the relatively stable areas. >> one of the things that my fellow commissioner and i were saying is it's refreshing to have you just tell us the truth whether it always makes you look good or not, and by telling us the truth it makes you look better even when you acknowledge mistakes and lessons learned. you gave an example, and thank you for doing that.

that's something the military has to do with the government. >> no question, and so, you know, the next line, you know, down is generally water, education, health in some order. we don't do health work, and we have to have a series of conversation that we explain we can't build clinics or mobile health units, and eventually the community comes around and says, we'll prioritize the water system that you can help us with and we agree to disagree, and if it's something we can't do, we don't do it to make them happy. >> the grant gives you the flexibility to give you what the communitiments to do. it's not you have to build this school at this place at this time. >> we don't build schools. it's community based, and that's one the nice things about grants or cooperative agreements is that ultimately we are able to walk away and so within an individual community if there's an extremely volatile conflict

and working with anybody in that community is going to exacerbate that conflict or throw over the power dynamic or we overpowered this commander and now he has other resources -- >> yeah, i get it. others, real quick. >> one example is mortality rate is high in afghanistan, and one of the systems to deal with that is training mid wives. there's a grant for training mid wives which means having younger girls go to another town to be trained for 18 months. it was very, very hard to get that first group of girls to be part of the first class. it took a lot of persuasion and discussion. the good news is the second time around there was fathers, brothers, parades to sort of pick my daughter, pick my wife to do it. there are ways this can take place. >> thank you, great story. mr. bowers?

>> i'm told failure should not be set up on capitol hill, there's failure with good intentions, and there's also success with really bad development, and so often we have to calculate what's the risk, what's the community's benefit here, what's the reward? if there's failure in that, we need to learn from it and where to avoid that in the future, and there's the say no to money that just looks wrong. >> just quickly, and you, ms. cole, are we spending too much development money in afghanistan, particularly right now because we're trying to do too much? are we -- so that's the question. >> it's my judgment from everything that i hear that we are throwing way, way too much money at the situation right now in order to facilitate a rapid transcigs. >> would anyone in the panel disagree with that? okay. ms. richards?

>> not disagreeing, but misspending too much money in afghanistan. also what happened when you have the countries that are so associated with, you know, american success, the success of the administrations, they tend to vacuum up the money that could be spent in other countries as well. >> while your coughing is mismanaging money while spending too much money. let me end by saying i don't respond this way, but there was an e-mail from someone who was watching this saying they were enjoying the questioning, and it happens to actually be a cousin of one of our employees, heather merser who was 24 years old. i think i have it right, and they were imprisoned shortly after by the taliban after 2011

working were shelter now international, and the question i have directed to you, mr. mcgarry, how do you deal with being a christian organization in a muslim world? is there a challenge that you face and should we be aware there's certain things you shouldn't be doing because you have a religious name in a muslim world? >> first, the first thing is just being incredibly explicit about who we are, what we do and don't do. both internally and externally we're a relief organization, not a -- >> you feel you are able to convince people that's the truth in >> as long as we do quality work, we never had a complaint about the catholic christian organization until we mess somebody else up. these catholics are here for no good, but as long as we do

quality work and have a zero tolerance policy, it's not an issue for us. >> thanks. let me just thank you all for coming again. let you all have the last word, last closing remarks, and thank you for making this an interesting and productive morning for us. ms. cole, starting with you. >> i just want to thank you very much for offering the opportunity to have the hearing today. i think that you have opened up the door to understanding that there are very knew neck capabilities that if we just bring them to bear in a more proficient manner, we might have proved success on the ground. >> thank you. mr. bowers? >> i want to send out a thank you for your commission's work, and i think in the end it's in our best interest to see how we can better serve the communities we work in, but also better serve the american taxpayer. >> thank you, mr. bowers.

mr. klosson? >> ditto with thank yous to your commission. when looking at afghanistan, there's three big issues that confront you. one of the question is security, corruption, one is a question of capacity, and i think on all three accounts when you look at community based approaches, that's one way to tackle a big portion of those, and we discussed that today and what we can bring to the table. >> thank you. >> again, i really appreciate the opportunity to be here. i missed you in kabul, so as ms. richard mentioned, we were an organization pushing for the creation of this, and we're excited to shine a spot light on what is and not working. >> i wanted commissioners to know what when he took the oath and said i do, it was the second time he said i do. he got married on saturday. this is part of his honey moon. >> isn't it i will?

all grooms get is wrong by saying i do. [laughter] thank you. congratulations. >> thank you very much for having us. we are eager to talk about these things, and if the other commissioners would like an inform mall chat, we would love to fop up and do that. we appreciate you went to kabul and met with our staff in the capitol there, and, you know, congressman, if you have former colleagues who want to talk about this, we want to talk about them too. thank you for shining a spotlight on that. >> i was going to let you all get the last word, but mr. mcgarry, don't make the mistake that a congressman who served in colombia, it was such a memorable moment for him that he thought he should take his wife on the honey moon and when she said when they got there,

what the hell are you taking me here for? afghanistan is not the place for your honeymoon. [laughter] >> thank you. >> great closing line. >> that's the best advice i've ever given anyone. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the story is bigger at large opposed to the microeconomic question of whether or not given set of carriers builds out. >> the president's chief technology officer on wireless mergers, the expanding broadband in the u.s. joins guest reporter tonight at 8 eastern on the communicators on c-span2. >> even at the cost of further wrecking the economy and

disabling democracy has reached epidemic proportions. >> that's on c-span at 8 p.m. tonight, and on c-span2, a look at the balance of state rights and federal authority as well as the legacy of brown vs. board of education. >> i would say, and correct me if i'm wrong, that brown versus board was to protect the peace and prosperity of the people, and if the federal government stepping its bounds, i don't see why the federal government is there if not to protect the peace and prosperity of its own people. [applause] >> man -- [applause] well i must say for being a student at the university ever colorado -- [laughter] you have great insight. [laughter] i would say, i would just say this that i would love to see the federal government dedicated to those principles that you mentioned, but running every

facet of our lives and education is not one of them. i honestly believe that colorado educators are smart enough to do it without the federal government, without the department of education. >> you can watch that decision on state's rights and federal authority tonight at 8:30 p.m. on c-span2 and the future of labor unions tonight.

>> two house subcommittees looked at u.s. border security and how operations might be affected by environmental laws. they introduced legislation to waive some environmental rules for boarder patrol agents when operating on public lands. at issue is the impact of border patrol vehicles, observation towers, roads and fences on national park, forest service, or willerness lands. they examined cooperation between federal agencies in implementing environmental laws in border areas particularly in the less secure areas alonged u.s. southern border. this is a little over three hours. >> some of the other colleagues will be joining us. we'll see how far we can get in this process. as you know, there's a change in the schedule today for truly an an unusual circumstance so we will be interrupting for votes

repeatedly. we apologize for that. it will be one vote at a time so we can run over, come back, probably no more than than 10-15 minute interruptions as we go with that. with that, i'll call the hearing to order. i note the presence of a quorum which is low bar for us here today. subcommittees on national security, homeland defense, foreign operations, and subcommittees national public lands meeting today to hear testimony on how key operations can harm the environment. under the rules, the opening statements will be limited to the chairman and the ranking members whenever they show up. so we can hear from the witnesses quickly, i will ask for concept to include the member's opening statements in the record if submitted to the clerk by the close of business days. hearing no objection, that's so ordered. i ask mr. reyes be the first

witness of the day if he is here when we reach that time, otherwise when he gets there, we'll interrupt you and allow that to take place. with no objection, that so ordered. i just banged the gavel. i ask unanimous con cement that the senator from new mexico, mr. pearse, joins us and introduces the witnesses and participates in the hearing. once again, without objection, so ordered. i will make my opening statement after my colleagues had a chance to speak so i will now recognize the chairman of the subcommittee on national defense and foreign operations for his opening statement. >> thank you to my colleague and friends and chairman, mr. bishop. we are examining the extent to which federal laws effect the ability for law enforcement to patrol and secure our borders. we are examining the extent to which restrictions placed upon border patrol agents are harming the environmentment since december of 2006, the drug cartel related violence in mexico continued to grow in both

frequency and intensity. in mexico, 3,000 people killed in 2007. that number increased to 7,000 in year tbaight. more than 9500 people killed in 2009, and by 2010, that number is now over 15,000. according to reports, most of the crimes occurred in or within a short distance of the united states border towns, and americans also suffered. three law enforcement injured or lost lives. on february 15, 2011 two agents were both shot in the line of duty. mr. zapata died from his injuries later. u.s. border patrol brian terry was shot fatally trying to prevent criminal activity along the border. i was going to show you the photos, but having reviewed the photos, they are so graphic and disturbing, i worry about

sharing them in this format here. this steep and continual increase in violence across the border raises concerns for the public and members on both sides of the aisle. the department of homeland security is responsible for securing the u.s. border and responsible for activity at the u.s. border including illegal activities occurring on federal lands. the department of homeland security increased the amount of agents and resources directed towards preventing human trafficking, kidnapping, drug use, and illegal immigration. despite the use of extra resources, they issue that the gao, has identified gaping holes in the border secure strategy. just recently, he testified there's only 129 miles of the roughly 1054 mile long southwest border where the border patrol can "detour or detect and

apprehend illegal entries." only 129 of the nearly 2,000 miles are adequately secured. this is unacceptable and the federal government should be ashamed. the federal government spending billions of dollars on flawed border security has to find a better solution that is coast effective. because of the department's inability to secure the border, this depends on access to federal lands. in 2006, the department of interior and agriculture all entered into a memorandum of understanding. the purpose of the mou was to guard federal lands and ensure the concerns about protecting the environment would be addresses. the mou emphasize the the need for cooperation to request by the border patrol. according to the mou, the parties greed to cooperate and do so "in an expedited manner." however, a recent gao report

authored by ms. mittal, corpse has not always occurred between the department of homeland security, interior, and usda. they are testifying today all on the same panel. border patrol agents in charge of the 16 of the 26 stations have told the gao that "when they attempt to obtain a permit or permission to access portions of federal lands, restrictions or delays result from complying with land management laws. " i support the utmost protection of the environment and uses of public lands, but at the same time, we have to listen to the border patrol agents who butt their lives on the line every day. some agents say the laws have "lessened agent's ability to detect undocumented aliens." again, this is totally unacceptable. unsecured border is a national security threat. the sooner this administration realizes the fact and acts

accordingly, the safer we'll be. i look forward to hearing from the panel of witnesses. i appreciate you coming here traveling from great distances. i appreciate you being here today. i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you. the ranking member on my subcommittee i see on the floor. he is here with us in spirit, and when he's here, he will be recognized to give an opening statement if he wishes. we have the ranking from government -- whatever your title is now, here. i appreciate mr. teirny for being here. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the question posed by today's hearing is whether this prevents the border patrol from securing the border. the recent answer from the department of interior, the department of grouted, and the general accountability office appears to be no. as chief ido made clear in his testimony, these are not usually

exclusive. let's not create a false choice where none exists. of course, the wilderness act and laws place restrictions on the border patrol's operations in sensitive area. according to the bulk of testimony we receive today, the restrictions posed a low burden that's been managed through interagency cooperation. mr., this is not to say there's incursions on the border. we know human traffickers continue to use federal lands to perpetrate their illegal activities. nonetheless, while the lands are used to commit illegal activity, most are honed to environmental resources, cultural heritage sites, and endangered species. the border believes they cannot achieve the mission and be responsible steward of the environment at the same time. the department of the interior and department of agriculture agree through the general accountability office studied the issue extensively concurs. this committee is no stranger to

the challenged posed at the border and op going violence in mexico. the committee held several hearings examining the threats posed by drug cartels in mexico and federal strategies to confront the challenges. trammingically, over 30,000 citizens in mexico were killed there in the last 0 years. there's real challenges there, but almost by all accounts today environmental restrictions are not one of them. mr. chairman, i look forward to working with you to identify and take l the very real challenges that confront our border security. thank you. >> thank you for your open statement. i am prepared to give mine at this particular time. i'm glad we are all here on this particular process and especially that we will be joined by a couple of people. representative will be here lately, or will be here soon. representative giffords who we pray for a speedily recovery to

soon join us, and representative pearse represent the dias and i appreciate why they explain why they have a problem that basically has solutions to be found here in washington if we wished. the issue is illegal entrance into the country and i think the bottom line has to be that it is unacceptable, even one is unacceptable, but what happens today is unacceptable. the forest service and department of interior have a speedometer here, and the bottom line what you are doing isn't working. the status quo is unacceptable. if things are getting better, and in some areas it is getting better, that is positive, but not good enough. it's not just people coming across the border searching for a better life. what is is concern for us is people who with kming across the border are the drug cartels destroying the lives of our kids with illegal drugs.

they are prostitution rings, human traffickers, people assaulted, raped, and murdered on american lands, and that is unacceptable. what is worst? american citizens living in the area are being threatened and killed, and that is simply unacceptable. can i have map two up there? that's not map two. that's it. it shows the regions coming here from the last bit of data. ..

so the question has to be, why is that the access choice for those coming in here? can i have not won? this is the borderland bite definition. orderliness 100 above disorder. everything is owned by the federal government in places we were having success there's not a whole lot of red. in the places where the problem exists it is red. 97% of all apprehensions are on federal lands. when we built the fence, 36 laws were waved in order to build the fence. one makes the assumption those 36 may indeed have a reason in the problem the border patrol has been securing the borders right now.

department of interior, i'm sorry, your response so far has been number eight, which is to set up a sign telling americans not to go on american property. the outrage of these signs was secured and you pull them down, but the attitude has not changed. a sovereign country has to control it sovereignly and then we're not doing that and that is simply unacceptable. it is still unsafe for americans to go into america and that is simply unacceptable. representative from homeland security will come in here and basically tell us things are fine. were getting along. we're improving. i want you to know i don't buy it. i don't buy it because the logical assumption means that border patrol is incompetent to do their job and i don't believe that for one second. i believe the border patrol is competent but their frustrations at the department of the interior and if i could have number four i believe that prohibits them. these are the old barriers we used to have along the border. they've been removed as we've

gotten better. her spirit now one man manager under the direction of the department of interior use these borders not to secure the border, but just a border patrol from entering areas he did not wish them to enter. that is unacceptable. the border patrol to do their job if they're allowed to do their job. even senator being a man who is not a hawk on the border introduced it will misspell for new mexico in recognize there should be a five-mile strip in which the border patrol had total access. he got the right idea. he just had the numbers on. five miles doesn't cut it. the gao report that came to us, a lot of people have taken one sentence out of context. unaffected by loved management. if you read the entire report it went down to page 32. you would see what they said was in other words, no portions of the stations jurisdiction have had their border security status such as control manager monitor

downgraded as a result of land management laws. to me, that is not the same thing, especially if you look at the rest of the report via 17 of 26 did have monitoring delays and portions of their programs delayed at 14 under 17 can say they could not get waivers from the managers in a timely manner. the majority didn't say cooperation has not always occurred. the data is not accurate to some land managers monitor areas on a routine basis. some documents on an ad hoc pieces. still others click no data at all. this unit can take over 75 days to accomplish. three out of seven says the restrictions cause a problem for them. five out of seven says the endangered species causes a problem for them. one area in arizona took four months to get permission to build a mobile surveillance system and the reason for it according to the manager down there he is limited staff with numerous other priorities here this is not important. a place in arizona took six

months to get permission to improve roast the border patrol needed on pure land management to conduct patrols and surveillance equipment. a month in another area to allow improvements for truck transportation to move an underground sensei that didn't take place. i find it interesting in some places is simply never happen. border agent in charge told his maintenance is needed for five rows into surveillance system faces in the station of operation that did not receive permission at all. without the maintain roads, the agents could not reach the sites for mobile service system, even in areas highly illegal traffic. in another area where there a few rows commit the agents had one additional road on an east-west corridor could close close to the border to combat the 8000 miles of trails that undocumented workers have produced in this particular system. another area of the national forest they approved helicopter landings because of the remote and that's great but unfortunately everything was delayed until 2011.

contrasting two previous examples on border patrol requested access, wilderness area management land to chime in that additional border patrol access would not improve the protection of the resources. so what happened is they put the surveillance family and that is owned by the state of arizona, not by the federal government and still created a three-mile hole in their surveillance for undocumented workers. the lan manager requested the border find a different control for wilderness restrictions and expand the border patrol did not demonstrate to him that the proposed power made the final decision, not the patrol. field type the memo of understanding is working. i'm glad you're becoming chummy with the memo of understanding. the memo of understanding is not the same thing as border security. the memo of understanding is not a solution. the numbers show you in the first site is simply not working. the results of the memo are

unacceptable. the memo has failed. it was designed to fail and that prohibits the border patrol from simply doing their job. what the memo does is confirm what people on the ground have contended in what washington has denied. but we have to do is regain control from the drug cartels national security has to be a wondering issue to take a phrase from bill clinton, the defense needed 36 waivers, border patrol and is the same kind of situations. order patrol should not be stopped or inhibited in anything they do. the environment is being trashed by illegal entry. it is not national security threat in our environment. it is the lack of national security threatening our firemen. the department of the interior must have better priorities of human life takes a higher priority over what they're looking up with blinders they have. compartmentalize on border security are in conflict. you'll hear a lot a spin today, especially from the next panel of witnesses. if i can phrase once again that when your head quit spending it

will be facing towards the front. what is happening right now is not acceptable in a has to change. alright, i appreciate your patience not. once again, when mr. grijalva arrives, will have his opening statement. what previously recognized mr. reyes who will be here. we've approved your presence here and noted he would be the first speaker for us. your timing is impeccable. you can adjust the right time to give your statement and we appreciate the service and the history you bring to us as one of those border patrol workers that did such a great job in an area where you were allowed to do a great job. you are recognized, mr. reyes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and mr. chairman s. file and ranking member tierney and i know ranking member grijalva is probably on his way. i find speaking on the floor. thank you for giving me an opportunity to be here to lend

my comments to the very important work you're too respective committees are doing. i guess one of the first points i want to make an underscore is oftentimes we that represent border districts and those that are like did to leadership positions in the border area get frustrated because decision made here at the federal level off and impact the communities and the relationship between communities and the customs and border protection and other law enforcement agent fees that have very important work to do to secure the nation. so i want to tell you how much i appreciate the opportunity not just to be here this morning,

but i actually was part of a field hearing you did in brownsville, texas, where the community had a chance both to testify, and also to observe a hearing in the process. just last week the committee on homeland. the on the senate side, senator lieberman's committee asked my county judge to come up and give testimony. so she was up here and in fact made a number of points that i want to reinforce here this morning. first of all, i represent the safest city in the united states of over 500,000 people were more. it is interesting to note that five of our border cities to include the two largest one, el paso and san diego and mcallen,

laredo and tucson are in fact on the top 10 list of safest cities in the country. the reason i mention that is because often times the rhetoric does not match what we are experiencing income and those of us that live on the border. the border is not a lawless region. the border is not an area that is out of control. i can't say enough about the work that border patrol is doing. i cannot say enough about the cooperation that exists to make sure that border communities are secure, feel secure and our job is to make sure that the facts come out. so when we talk about the border region, i would strongly recommend that you do a series of hearings, in particular may be in those cities that are among the safest cities in the

country. i speak from a perspective of having spent 26 and a half years working the border, working my way up from an agent, working five years and the dell rio area, dell rio site dirt and then being chief into other areas, south texas and el paso, where i was born and raised. so i always want to make sure that is the only member of congress with that background that i get an opportunity to at least provide what i feel is very important and that is accurate information about what is going on and i don't expect people to take my word for it. i welcome and in fact we have had a number of hearings both in el paso and other areas that have joined both this committee and other committees that have that responsibility, to take

testimony, but most importantly to go out there and see the work that is being done by our border patrol agents, see the work that is being done in concert with other agencies, both federal, state and local, which is very important. the cooperation that exists. i wanted to give one example of how that cooperation is important by citing a recent issue that existed in my community. and that was -- there is one last section of fence and it to take place right near our downtown area in el paso. in that area is also the water source that's literally 12 minutes away from the water treatment plant, that when it was initially proposed defense that area would have put that

water sewers south of the fencing. so thanks to the cooperation of the customs and border protection consulting with the community, we came up with a compromise that we are going to close off that canal so that people who are intending on may be taking some kind of a terrorist act against the united states don't have access to the water system. so we will close it off. the border patrol will get their offense and defense will also protect some infrastructure that the city was concerned about, that is critical in controlling the water runoff during storms. those are the kinds of cooperative and consultation efforts that make sense in our communities. and i guess today i would ask

that the decisions that are recommended from this -- from this committee be done with that spirit in mind, that we oftentimes want to make decisions, for instance, putting up a very expensive since it areas they really don't need it, in areas where we can monitor electronically, were agents have sufficient time to respond once those intrusions are known. they are the experts. i retired from the border patrol over 15 years ago, but i still very much interest in keeping contact and proud to say they are not just my former colleagues by my friend and we need to do everything we can to support them both because it is

america's first line of defense, but most importantly the border patrol works on the theory that it's always better to consult with the local community because they are part of that community so that those priorities are reached, both the enforcement priority in the community priority, as i just spoke about with the example i gave you. the last point i want to make is that when i retired, we had a little over 5000 agents in the whole border patrol. we've done a very good job of increasing the size of the border patrol. today there is over 20,000 agents. there is one area that i am concerned about that we haven't focused on and i hope we get a chance to do that and that is that the ports of entry. today, we are seeing a lot of these statistics that the amount

of narcotics that are being intercepted at those ports of entry. and across the nation, those ports of entry are carrying on a normal average about 831% to 38% vacancy ratio in the ranks. that means many different things including the fact that it creates the vulnerable environment for a country, but also means long waiting lines for people wanting to cross the border. where narcotics are coming through those ports eventually because that workforce, so i hope we get a chance to have hearings on increasing officers at those ports of entry. i know if you ask border patrol

here this morning, they can tell you the same thing and verify the fact that it doesn't make sense to have control and between the ports of entry and not at the ports of entry that account for millions of entries every single day from mexico into the united states and also from canada into the united states. so with that, thank you for giving me an opportunity to testify before you this morning and i would be happy to answer any questions you might have. >> thank you, mr. reyes. we want to be respectful of your time, but does anyone have questions for the gentleman from texas. representative chaffetz, go ahead. go ahead. >> thank you for being here and i know you care as much about this issue is anybody. from their lives, border patrol agents are putting their lives on the line. they are going to inhospitable

areas, people that they don't know, that they are trying to apprehend. concern is the rural areas, particularly where we have environmental laws that prohibit the use of vehicles and other types of things. can you really look somebody in the eye and pay if you do this on foot, you're going to be equally a secure and safe in effect as you would if you were in the vehicle? that is my concern is that part of the testimony that we are about to your comments written testimony that came thorsen from department of interior said any land at any time a patrol on foot or on horseback. i can't imagine that it a border patrol in the eye and a sorry come you can't use the vehicle with the safety, security and speed you can get. you guys go on foot. if that really what we should be telling our border patrol agents? >> well, not so much on foot. my experience has always been border patrols is a hardy bunch.

they love patrolling on horseback and there a number of reasons were not only does it provide quick access in very rough terrain, but it also allows them to have a higher is that whatever is ahead of them. and they can ride up on groups of people much faster and much safer. >> than a vehicle? >> been a vehicle. well, remember what we are talking about are the areas that you just mentioned are very rough terrain, very uneven terrain. yes, we have things like -- >> i mean, some of it is -- it is not all mountainous.

>> no, no, it is not. but i guess from my youth, from my experience, it just make sense to give the tools to the border patrol that they need and did some of these areas, what they want are the ability to patrol on horseback. >> but i guess the core questionnaire is who should make that decision? shouldn't that be the decision of the border patrol to say this is how we are going to secure our folks? >> the law says that the border patrol has the right of access anywhere unrestricted anywhere within 25 miles of an international border. they have that authority, but the cheese -- >> i wish that was true. the understanding is that's not true. my understanding is that's on private property, but not public

land. they can't do that. you have to get permission from someone who does not the best interest of the border patrol in mind, that does not to do with the fact the last summit to go life on this public property. >> well, i've been there. i have seen that area. i have talked to the cheese that have been in charge of those areas. they don't have a problem of access because at least the ones i've talked to because they do patrol that area effectively. they have the same concerns that chairman bishop articulated and that is from an environmental is, the water jugs, plastic bags and all of that stuff but undocumented people leave are an issue for them, but access and the ability to patrol and i'm

not speaking for them. they'll be testifying. i am telling you from my experience and from talking to the chiefs in those areas, they don't -- at least they have not told me that they had denied access to that area. >> i want to conclude within the scope of time. i guess the point i'm trying to drive home is the border patrol should be making those types of decisions whether or not they use a horse or foot or vehicle and that's the driving point. would you disagree or agree with that? >> i would not disagree, but don't discount the fact that the chiefs in charge of those areas have the best interest of officer safety in mind first and foremost, but they also, you know, one of the things that i have learned through my experience is no one is more attuned and i go back to say in the border patrol is a hardy bunch. no one is more attuned to the

surrounding, to respect the nature and those kinds of things. that's why he mentioned to one of the biggest complaints i have heard is about the refuge that's left behind by undocumented people. >> i yield back. >> mr. tierney, questions for your colleagues. >> mr. reyes, thank you for joining us. you have marks are inserted in any member of congress and it's her job in the border patrol but should also send been a member focused on this area because of your district obviously to be in touch with people, which strikes me as imposing on you some of the questions, an outsiders view that she's got the experience of a still want to tell you what works. what i'm hearing is basically what it is an environmental law that might touch of on a conflict with a security issue that's been involved and work it out pretty reasonably. >> that's correct.

>> my understanding is memorandum of understanding between different agent these as of when there is an area of exigency whether it hot pursuit further security issue. the border patrol does have motorized vehicles. >> that i know of, nowhere is the border patrol precluded from doing what it needs to do. >> there is a question here about who makes a decision. we have lost in the country and i suspect those prevail. and you find the agencies trying to implement those laws and the memorandum of understanding is a way to reconcile any conflicts that might appear within those laws. your experience has been the agencies have been able to effectively, under the memorandum of agreement able to resolve issues or problems for the most part that come up with that. >> that's been my experience,

yes. >> the border patrol maxis fans by motor vehicle or other exigent for emergency situations and that seems to cover a ground when it comes to a final decision. border patrol defies exigency for emergency need to have news or vehicle and make out. has that been your experience? >> yes, it has. and you know, you've got to remember there are times when perhaps you've got an airplane crash, you've got some other kind of emergency when an agent is shot. the border patrol chiefare not going to allow anything to interfere with being able to get in there and doing whatever needs to be done to the security area area and most importantly take care whatever officers injured. >> it appears they don't appear either. but the laws and agreements under them allow that to happen. >> absolutely. >> has that been your experience that there are other fact there

is involved and sometimes causing difficulty for border patrol agents or others to get control over your particular area? in that topography or geography, are they sometimes more than a patent for the agency? >> will sure. and that's why you cant the chief the senate were does that area best. he is in constant communication with both the agent in charge of whatever area is an institution that you're describing. and decisions are made both in terms of being able to secure the area and how they would respond and with what they would respond. i mean, that's the chiefs responsibility, to make sure that in the case of the national meet for an emergency effect in officer safety or the safety of maybe a rancher or maybe

undocumented person whose life is in jeopardy, they will make whatever decision needs to be made and how that access without any problem. >> so how many years, mr. reyes, we remember? >> 26 and a half. >> 26 years, 15 years in congress representing an area. folds in that and conversations with various agencies, representatives and employees live there. how many instances are you aware of for an environmental law for one of the other lies we were discussing this morning was an insurmountable impediment to the border patrol doing its work? >> i can't think of any. in fact, i will tell you border patrol agents work very closely in texas with what we know as pick writers and their job and responsibility is to make sure cattle does not come over from mexico because of the kinds of

diseases they would have. the border patrol works closely. i worked than when i was an agent. we worked very close he with the parks and wildlife people and on occasion dps, public safety and park rangers and general in the areas that they have a presence. so when you're wearing a badge, you have that responsibility. you want to make sure that to the extent possible that you have both knowledge of who is better and an understanding that they are going to come to your assistance and you'll go to their assistance because of both the environment and the hostility of the area or perhaps either a drug smuggler, alien smuggler or others that might not distinguish in not know the

difference between a border patrol agent, park ranger, tech writer. >> thank you for come this morning and sharing your extensive experience from a range of days. >> my good friend from michigan, do you have any questions for mr. reyes? >> just a statement. i am from michigan and we border in canada, so we do sometimes look at our northern border also and generally those who do try to get into michigan come in by plane from europe. one person i caught trying to comment from detroit, but by water and i've been impressed with the cooperation between the border patrol and the forest service enter coast guard, which is really very important. ..

>> we have less officers, and they depend on relationships with local law enforcement like the rcmp up there. >> one good border patrol person helped apprehend one who is up to no good at all. she was training, and her assessment was able to stop

that. >> thank you, dale. appreciate that. i'll recognize him and representative pearse of new mexico. >> have you been sworn in? i have a lot of questions for you. >> i think the assumption is you are sworn in. >> we've sworn at him. [laughter] >> congress mange, thank you for being here. thank you for the outside view from an inside agency. not only is this my committee room, but my best friend in congress. thank you, that's all i wanted to say. >> thank you, mr. chairman, because as i said publicly on occasion, many times while we differ in our politics, i think we all want to do what's best for our national security in the protection and how we get there

really is, i think, the important part for many different reasons. these guys are the experts. i thank god that i have that background because i really enjoyed my 26 and a half years in the border patrol. i don't think there's a finer law enforcement group in the world than the border patrol, but as you can just expect, i'm probably a little biased. >> part of what we know about you is you newsed to be somebody. >> yes. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you for being here this morning. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you must be special. he never said anything that nice to me. in time, in time. [laughter] >> he was a member of my committee when i was chairman of the intelligence committee, and we worked on many different issues. >> you have photos or

something? >> no, not that i'm aware of, but we worked on stuff -- tough stuff that nobody will know publicly, but again, it's bout the national security of our country. >> thank you, i appreciate the opportunity to be here on this committee, and i thank my neighbor for decades of service in the border patrol and here in congress. more a comment than a question i'm hearing what you're saying that el paso is the safest city in the u.s., less than 15 miles -- i mean, el paso bumps up against the towns in my district, and 15 miles from downtown eel el paso, they bar their windows and doors, and they don't feel to be in the safest place in the world. in fact, just two weeks ago in anthony, they declared their

streets to be unsafe, and what can be done about it, and, sir, it's such a contrast from the safest city to just 15 miles away. wasn't there a major highway shut down in eel el paso because of gun affair. was that the year before? >> no, anthony is not on the border. >> i'm sorry, sunland park is on the border. it's the same. they feel they express tremendous -- >> well -- >> for their safety. >> well, if you at least, we have to separate criminal activity by nonillegal aliens coming through the area, and anthony's streets were unsafe because of gang activity, the war on gangs which occurs throughout anywhere in this country, but the highway that

runs along the river is the road that you were referring too, and, yes, there was a gunfight that occurred which may be the most violent city, internet the most violent city in the americas, but maybe the most violent city in the world because of the friction among the cartels, but there were bullets concern by the police department and a stray bullet might hit a passing car there. it's just a consequence of the location of that highway. >> sure. if i could reclaim my time -- >> go ahead. >> mr. chairman, i would point out the gang signs, whatever the gang sipes are from mexico, central america, appeared on barns in the second district of

new mexico and it alarms people, and we have the rancher killed, his ranch butted up against ranches of ours. in the 26.5 years you served, what wilderness areas were in your jurisdiction, under your command? which willerness areas, former designation of wilderness? >> well, as an agent, i worked what is known as the amistad lake area. >> is that designated wilderness? >> sections are, and in fact, because of the caves there with drawings there and all of that, they have been under the jury diction of i believe the department of the interior. it's a -- it's an area that amistad like as you know like

falcon like is on the border, half in mexico, and half in the united states, and we had the responsibility -- >> thank you, thank you. i would just observe that mr. bingeaman offered a bill, and there was 25 miles access in every wildernesserness area on -- wilderness place said there were wheeled vehicles into the five mile stretch. the wilderness a long time ago, an airplane crashed from my hometown. they had to backpack the bodies out. in other words wilderness is a restrictive designation. we had testimony if we created the wilderness along the rio

grande they could not get bulldozers in, and then we would be subject to flooding for the rest of the time. wilderness area, i got the wilderness in my district. i went to the organ pipe national park, and that was completely off limits to american tourists because of the illegal activity across the border, and if our agents were able to access that, it doesn't seem like that it would be offlimits to american tourists because it was so dangerous. many places in new mexico only bashed wired fence is there on the border. >> if i can respond? >> 15 seconds. >> they have the authority to do the kind of work that irrespective of wilderness designations that mr. pearce

talked about with respect to levies and dams. if you check that out, it'll be clear whose got the jurisdiction. >> mr. reyes, i want to give the benediction to your presentation today by thank thank thanking you for being here. i agree with point after point. the cities are improving, the border control is doing a good job, and one study said they put a strategy on high priority on urban and pop populated areas. it does work when they are allowed to do their jobs. they had diverted traffic to remote lands where you are talking. i agree the agent should be able to respond as best they can. i agree also there's some areas that are some fences that is not legitimate option for it, but indeed, access by the border patrol is, and sometimes they do use horses.

it was said that it's inadvisable for officers' safety to await the arrival of a horse to apprehend somebody. that is difficult, and they are fed wheat pellets because you can't have perfect kinds of horses. local consultation should be the best spaces of making those decisions. i agree what you said on the emergency circumstances although i will tell you that the mou has a definition of what those are, than they are not always maintained by the land managers. there are times the land managers told the border patrol different than what the mou was supposed to. the last one is i agree with the good idea you had on beefing up our port of entries. >> thanks. >> you said we should have bigger staff there at port of entry which means size. what he's talking about are

portly officers at the port of entry in which case i took offense to that because he's talking right about me. i appreciate you being here. thank you for your testimony and for being a part of this, and we thank you for that, and you can go back and do real work now. >> thank you so much. i look forward to working with you and your respective committees on these very important issues for our country. thank you very much. >> great. we now have the next panel that will be joining us, but i understand the practice of the oversight reform committee is for the witness to be sworn in. i would like representative chaffetz -- >> let's have a four minute recess. >> all right. the next panel will come up very, very slowly so the panel gets set up for you, so, if you want to come up slowly. didn't stand up yet, that's too fast. [laughter] it's going to be a coup m seconds --

couple seconds before we get situated up here. we will have ronal vitiello. you can correct me with that, kim thorsen, deputy assistant secretary of law enforcement security of the emergency mountain from the department of interior, jay jensen, secretary under secretary for natural resources, department of agriculture. i didn't mess up yours, because those are good old danish names. i can handle that. in one second we ask you and i think i'm going to turn the chair over to representative chaffetz to take care of this portion. >> it is the practice of the oversighted and government reform committee that all witnesses would be sworn in. those three witnesses as well as the backup witnesses to rise and raise your right hand please. do you swear to tell the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you god? thank you. you may be seated and let the record reflect that all participants answered in the affirmative. thank you. it is our hope that this time that we, before the next vote occurs, that we can have the testimony of the individuals that are there. i do not -- do you care which order you go? let's take you from left to right. we'll start with homeland security, go to interior, and then finish up with the agriculture department. once again, thank you for being here. as you should know, you've been here long enough to know this stuff. your written testimony is in the record. anything else you want to add, we'll put into the record as well. the timer is in front of you. with the yellow light is on, there's one minute left. try to close it with the red

light as soon as possible. >> chairman bishop, mr. chaffetz, ranking members, it's my honor to appear before you to discuss border protections efforts concerning illegal activity on federal lands. i'm ronal vitiello, deputy chief of border patrol. i began in 1985 as a border patrol in texas. i held numerous positions within the organization in the southern and northern borders. i would like to be clear the border is a different place today than it was when i began the career. i witnessed the evolution of the border over 26 years in both terms of additional resources applied against the threat as well as the change in the adversary's ability to exploit border's vulnerabilities. we apprehended approximately 463,000 aliens compared to 10 years ago with 1.6 million arrests, more than a 50% we

duction. there's positive indicatessers of a a more secure border, our work will not end as long as there's peek seeking to enter the country illegally. the border strategy was implemented in 2004 and called for achieving control of the border with the proper mix of personnel, infrastructure, and technology. we sought to gain, maintain, and expand control at the border. with the assistance of congress, there's been an influx of resources, and we are expanding our security efforts. in lawn mower, we anticipatory -- in law enforcement, we operate within the rule of law. we will find a way to reasonably solve problems within the parameters of law. does the border patrol face challenges with respect to operating around protective lands in the enforcement zones? yes. we have been able to establish practical solutions to allow for mission success. in 2006, the secretaries of the departments of homeland security, interior, and agriculture signed a memorandum

of understanding to protect lands. it is understood that the border patrol cannot routinely patrol restricted lands in vehicle, but we can on horse back or foot without restriction. essentially, the mou formalized an informal situation that existed for years. those in charge are tasked with considering the multiple environments they oversee and establish their requirements if where are resources are required and how to best apply them. each tract of land has to be assessed individually. as our commander's layout rierpts, we work through the regulations to abide by the law all be it without sacrificing the nation's security. some security can be time consuming, but we have in place the necessary infrastructure, technology, or resources. additionally, we look at the border, each area has to be taken individually as no two vetches are the same. they range widely.

through our security efforts, the border patrol has a minimal impact. agents on the line every day interacting with the communities in which they live. there are many varying opinions from the border community, public interest groups, and the media alike. yet, we enforce the laws enacted by congress. we recognize there's partners in the security efforts. we have learned it takes a whole of government approach within law enforcement, within each of our duties, responsibilities, and authorities at all levels, federal, state, local, and tribal. we strive to move beyond mere collaboration and work towards integration with the state, local, and tribal and international partners moving forward and recognizing the strength of joint planning and implementation in a focused manner. our path forward is risk based. accordingly, we depend on information and intelligence to describe the intent and capability of our adversaries

defining the threat while assessing our vulnerabilities. in doing so, we have to be mobile, agile, and flexible. thank you for the opportunity to testify today. i do look forward to your questions. >> thank you. >> thank you. i appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the important issues in border security and the department of interior's role in the administration's collaborative efforts to address illegal cross border activity on federal lands. i'm kim thorsen, the deputy assistant secretary for law enforcement security and enforcement in interior. i've been here for 25 years, and i've been involved in border issues for 8 years. i'm joined here by the acting director of officer of law enforcement security for bureau of land management, jim hall, the chief of law enforcement for the national wildlife, and emergency services for the national park service. if i may, i'd like to submit our

full statement for the record and summarize my testimony. we appreciate the attention your subcommittees have given to the issue of securing borders. the department of homeland security and border patrol has been given the mandate. at interior, we have the responsibility of administering uniquely beautiful and environmental sensitive lands along the border eans recognize the significant values of these lands, and we strive to maintain their character and fulfill our mission to protect and preserve these assets on behalf of the american people. we also recognize that these two objectives, securing the borders, and preserving federal lands are not mutually exclusive or have a choice between the two. up stead, we can and should do both. we are proud of the strong working relationship based on cooperation eang the commitment to accomplishing our important agency missions among all the partner agencies. federal agencies with law enforcement presence on federal lands along the borders include

the border patrol, interior agencies including the land management, national park service, fish and wildlife service, and circumstances of indian affairs. wore agencies developed a cooperative approach to border security. in march 2006 interior, dhs, and agriculture entered into an mou providing us goals, prince p les, and guidance relating to securing the borders regarding emergencies, and minimizing the damage arising from illegal cross border activities on federal lands. we believe that the guidelines contained in the mou were effective in providing interior and border patrol with the necessary framework to strike the appropriate balance for patrol and access to interior lands by border patrol. while continuing to maintain an emphasis on federal trust resources. since intg into the mou, the three departments continually and successfully worked together to carry out the rules in the

mou at the headquarters and other levels. we have a structure to facilitate the coordination and collaborate rigs between border patrol and representatives. additionally, interior, agriculture, and dhs have found inner agency, environmental, and cultural stewardship trine training task force to build on current agents whose activities include federal lands. collaboration is taking place on the field. the border patrol and cooperation with interior and agriculture established a public lands liaison for 20 sectors. interior land managers collaborate on issues or concerns with the agents on a regular basis. in addition, border patrol agents frequently conduct joint patrols with law enforcement personnel on interior lands. this close coordination provide staffs with training on missions and enhances homeland security

activities and resource related investigations. these few examples are just a sampling of the ongoing collaborative dialogue and strong relationship that interior agencies and personnel have developed with our colleagues in the border patrol. the deployment of border patrol personnel and infrastructure along the southwest border has led to significant improvements and border security. we are pleased with these improvements because the enhanced security to our nation and also because the efforts lead to overall healthier conditions on the border. during the deployment of resources, we worked closely and well with border patrol to avoid or mitigate impacts of these operations on federal lands. in closing, i want to recognize the collective efforts that interior, dhs, and grouted have taken to meet the intent of the 2006 inner agency mou and the shared commitment by our departments to accomplishing the missions of our agencies. chairman chaffetz and bishop, that concludes my statement. i'll answer any questions you

may have. >> thank you, mr. jensen? >> thank you. members of the subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to provide the didn't's views on border security on national forest system lands. you have my written testimony for the record, but i want to emphasize some key points. first, the department and the forest service take very seriously the needs to secure our nation's border. we fully support as it is in our common interest that we address illegal u.s. border crossings, the smuggling of contra band and people across the border, the crimes committed against those smuggled, and other unlawful activities. through all of this, we have to recognize and empathize with the plight of undocumented foreign nationals seeking a better life, yet there are impacts to national forests on both the northern and southern borders particularly so on portions of

the coronado national forests where there's excessive trash, human caused fire, and the safety of the recreating public. we are undertaking successful measures to mitigate the impacts. second, i want to emphasize the close working relationship we have with the border patrol and other agencies. as our testimony indicates, we participate in numerous joint patrol exercises, have assigned a full time u.s. patrol service agent and committed realtime on the ground with each other, and work expeditiously to allow the border patrol the access they need while protecting the environment. in fact, just a few weeks ago, the forest service chief was in southern arizona meeting with chief hill of the tucson sector of the border patrol. they toured the border by helicopter to see the challenges we face together. there are much to do, but we are seeing success. to reenforce the general accounting office acknowledged the close cooperation between

the agencies. we are con vicinitied that a well protected border means well protected public lands. the more we assist withed border patrol, the less impact on the inarm forests. we are unaware of any requests made by the border patrol where we have not been able to accommodate their needs and still protect the environment. we want to thank the committees for their attention to this important issue and want to work closely with your and understand your concerns. our experience to date tells us we can accomplish the missions recognizing these are not mutually exclusive objectives. we'll continue to make progress with the border patrol and sister agencies within the department of interior towards the accomplishment of our missions. this includes my verbal testimony, thank you, and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, i appreciate all of you being here. let me ask the first round of questions. looking at the -- for all of you, looking at the minimal

understanding, it appears the agreement hinges on access granted on emergency circumstances. ms. thorsen, what is a circumstance? >> mr. chairman, it's outlinedded in the mou, and what we tried to do was ensure the border patrol agent and in their judgment determined what a circumstance was whether it's in pursuit of aliens -- >> is there a definition in the mou? >> yes. >> what is that definition? >> exercising existing emergency authorities including authority to conduct offroad pursuit with cbb's at any time and recommended as wilderness or wilderness study areas when in our professional judgment based

on articulated facts there's an emergency involving human life, health safety of persons within the area, or posing a threat to national security. >> that's the key almost. human life, safety, or posing a threat to national security. are you aware when my staff questioned one of your park superintend dents and even the direct of the of the national park service said a circumstance is life or death only? now, is that what the mou says? >> nope. >> okay. this incorrect definition is not just the opinion of the park services. unfortunately, the fish and wildlife director sent two letters saying in his opinion an emergency is defined as life threatening circumstances, and otherwise border patrol has to continue to access the refuge on foot or horse back and also gave them a warning if they violated a huge version of that mou, within six months he calls all access down. are you aware of that?

>> i'm not. >> what are you going to do about it? >> what we'll do is ensure and continually do this with our partners and agencies on the ground to ensure that the mou is enforced as written. >> that's nice. you are now aware that the ground personnel in doi are not operating under the same definition? you got it? >> yes, mr. chairman. >> were you aware when saying that prexes of land and protection of the border should not be mutually exclusive, that you should be able to do both? unfortunately, you're not. border patrol agents in the field explained to our staff they believe the mou could work, but it does not because the land agencies do not follow it. have you heard complaints from the land managers that they are not following the mou? >>ic that the mou givings the framework to do that. i think in any relationship there's differenting sides and interpretations.

>> how do you tell your border patrol for example if one of the land managers said the mou was no longer in effect because there was a new administration? >> well, we have, you know, regular people on the ground designed to work these issues and operationally understand amongst themselves how we interpret that the framework exists to solve the problems as raised. >> what would you tell the land manager when he said that? >> i would refer him to the public land liaison's officer. i could call kim's office and we could talk about what, you know, the perceptions or actual restrictions were, should be, or not should be. >> you have multiple examples of where this muo broke down. how will the mou function if the employees don't believe they are obligated to follow it? ms. thorsen? >> our speedometer in my -- responsibility in my office and folks in the field is to ensure

the appropriate implementation of the mou so we, and, in fact, the mou describes a mechanism if things don't work at the local level, that's moved up to the regional, and ultimately the head quarters level. there's mechanisms in place to ensure it's implemented as outlined in the frame work in the mou. it's our responsibility to follow-up on those instances and ensure that is happening. >> that doesn't work. i appreciate it, but it doesn't work. it's not working. the evidence and actually the accumulative evidence says that system flat out is not working. the fires referred to, how much of those are intentionally set? >> we don't track the numbers that actually know are intentionally set. we track the fires by human caused and through lightening. >> why don't you track arson? are they forest service employing discouraged from reporting arson? >> not al all. >> why don't you tract it? >> we can find specific fires

and track the cause, and in that sense, we get to the bottom of what caused the fires. >> you don't do that now? that's amazing. you said you were not aware of any problems with the agencies impeding the border property. check the gao report. i quoted from them. my time is over. there's another round here. >> so, i guess i'm trying to listen carefully here. it seems to me there's some agencies here not so much the mou doesn't allow for things to work properly, but there incidents reported where it may not have been implemented or worked effectively. is that what you witnesses are hearing as well? correct me if i'm not hearing properly. >> i think that's accurate. >> ms. thorsen? >> yes. >> mr. jensen? >> yes. >> is there affirm training to

all departments so they understand the chain of how they cooperate and work with others? >> there's an ongoing systematic way for folks to be exposed to it. we have it set up at each of the locations and so that's a constant kind of process because we have turnover in the field, relationships change, and so there's a constant, you know, revolution of people who learn, and then need to know, and then move on. next group gets the same kind of thing. it's like any other relationship, there are ebbs and flows in the level of contact, and its educativeness. >> is there a high percentage of the people between training or haven't been trained yet as they take on speedometers? >> i have to get you specific numbers, but it's our intent at each of the levels to have folks who are subject matter experts in the mou and then have the responsibility for the liaison and operational contact. >> are any of you aware of any particular incidents or incident

where the border patrol agents have been absolutely impeded from carrying out their responsibilities by interference by the wilderness laws 234 >> i'm not aware of anything specifically, but with 20,000 agents in the field, there are bound to be within these relationships differences of opinion and issues that get raised through the sector level commands, the station level certainly, and then up to the head qawters. there's been instances talking about these things at every level looking to solve the issues. >> i agree with that statement. there are instances where folks on the ground need to work through things, but our continual talking to them, meeting with some of our collaborative organizations that we have, the borderline management task forces and so forth to ensure that any issues not resolved at the very local

levels are bumped up through the mechanism and as i said earlier, all the way to head quarters. we are involved in my office personally to ensure any time we hear there's an impediment or differences on the ground that we figure that out and make it happen so the border patrol can successfully carry out their mission. >> is there consequences for those not interpreting the correct versions of the mou? >> the folks on the ground are bureau, and those folks do have performance plans and disciplinary whole performance -- >> do they use it? >> it is not -- i can't speak to that actually since i don't work in the bureaus. >> well, that's part of the problem of bureaucracy; right? we talk about one problem, and you can't answer for the part. is it reasonable to assume the

incidents reported that others here point out as individual circumstances will be reviewed and action taken in it's warranted? >> yes, i agree with that. >> you agree your agencies as well? >> yes. >> mr. jensen? >> absolutely. >> any one of you have in mind there's a mutually exclusive application in the wilderness laws and security? >> not exclusive. i agree. >> we see examples where there's success, and i think just this year, we embarked upon a joint operation called operation trident that occurs this year proving and demonstrating how we can work together to achieve the goals. >> with respect to fires, i i soup it's in your interest and agency to be sure people are not the cause of fires? >> that's absolutely correct. >> are you, as a representative

of the border patrol, here to lodge a complaint of any sort about the way the environmental laws or conservation laws or wilderness laws or anything else impede the ability of your men and women to protect this country and protect our national security? >> no complaimentd. no complaint. i agree this allows us to solve this in a practical way. it's best to do it at the field with the folks responsible for implementation directly. >> and you will do that? >> yes. >> thank you; i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chaffetz? >> are you familiar with the report from 2011, border measures on the southwest border? are you particular with it in >> yes, mr. chairman. >> all three of you yes? yes? yes. all right. i hope i'm pronouncing your name write, but you write "federal

lands can pose unique challenges." what's the challenges? >> like a lot of the enforcement work that's done both for the border patrol and in all law enforcement, there's a legal framework that we -- >> that is different. that is different -- >> because it's protected land, yes it is. >> your access, your ability to patrol is different than it is on say private land or different types of public land that are not designated add wilderness; correct? >> depending on the environment -- >> it is different? >> absolutely. >> okay. 16 of the 27 border stations indicated "when they attempted to get permission to access portions of federal lands, delays and restrictions resulted from complying with land management laws." would you agree with that or disagree with that? >> it's in the report, so i have no dispute about the fact -- >> you testify there's no problem. everything's rosy, and yet i go back and read the gao report, and you secured 129 miles of a

2,000 mile border. you can't come before the american people in this country and say that everything's rosy and fine. people are dying. they are getting killed because we have these big gaping holes in our security, and they go into the most inhospitable pieces of land, and they are die. they are dehydrated, go through cactus-ridden areas, and they are dying. we have border patrols there saying go on foot or horse because we want to protect the little road runner and kick cues. that's my concern. for you to testify routinely everything is fine. it's not different. i'm not aware of instances, and then read we're having permit and permission troubles is troubling. let me go on. according to gao, 14 of the 17 agents in charge, agents in charge, people that you should be personally familiar with of the border patrol stations indicated delays by federal land managers reported that they have

"been unable to obtain a permit or permission to access certain areas in a timely manner because of how long it takes for land managers to comply with environmental laws." so -- how have these delays based in this report lessened the agent's ability to see ultimate documented aliens. >> it's a snapshot in time. it allows the agents in the mou's to make the requests and when the requests is judged by the border land task force to be reasonable, then we sort through that and make it happen. to suggest that it's perfect, that's not why i'm here. it is -- >> the reason it's not perfect. let me move on. as indicated by the gao, they requested permission to move a surveillance system to a certain area. however, by the time permission was granted, four months after

the initial request, illegal traffic shifted to another area. as a result, border patrol "was unable to move the surveillance system to the local desired, and during the delay, agents were limited in their ability to detect undocumented aliens within a 7 mile range that could have been covered by the system" is that statement true or false? >> it's true. >> how can you testify everything is fine and that you're working with such great relationships. you have a system that i think would make your agents and united states of america safer, and these people give you a four month delay. how come you don't have the same outrage that i have? how come you say, you know, we work together. we have people dying. how do you respond to that because you testified that we've listened to what you said and everything's fine. >> the framework alaws for us to move through these issues and

this problem. is it perfect? no. >> in this instance, the record that came out is four months away. how do you -- how do you respond to this? jump in here. four month delay. why does that happen? >> >> go ahead. >> i'm asking me folks to find examples on the land here, and we're working as quickly as possible to work through the requests that come through, and there's examples now, the zone 20 project where we move to build roads on restricted lands. we are seeing success. it does not happen immediately in every siping l case, but we are marking tremendous progress in addressing these concerns as they arise. >> time expired. i yield back. >> mr. kildee? >> thank you, mr. chairman. all of us feel on this issue certainly as strongly as

mr. chaffetz, but i think, you know, some of us express ourselves differently, and i've been here 34 years, and i always find it a great opportunity when you have people from the field who know this issue very well who keep the level of trying to learn at a high level. i really appreciate your helping to enlighten us. we're not always going to agree, but i think we have this opportunity to learn from you. let me ask you this question. i'll address it to ms. thorsen, but any of you may answer. if there's an incident or a pattern of ignoring the mou that we've been talking about, what is your reaction or response to that, and should there be something stronger than an mou?

should it be something in law? >> thank you, congressman. our actions if there was a consistent pattern of ignoring the mou, as i stated earlier, we have a mechanism in place to bring that to our attention at head jr. quarters. i -- headquarters. i personally get involved to come together to figure out what's going on, and then we also talk to our bureau representatives and bureau directors and/or bureau directors with control over those local units and come together to discuss what the issues are and to resolve those issues. we do it very high level for any incident on the boarder that gets to our attention that we know about. we will take action such as that to ensure that it gets resolved on the ground. we hope moas resolve --

most resolve locally, but not all are. they do get to our attention. >> anyone else have a comment? well, i would encourage you to, you know, keep it at a high level or even raise the level of importance because when agreements are made, very often they are not easy to aat, but they are done for a reason. i encourage you to keep it at the high level. i think it's very important. i would not want to stop a chase because of someone didn't want to follow a memorandum of understanding which makes very goodceps, and there's importance for very often our national security, so i would keep it at the high level, in necessary, raise it to a higher level. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> are you familiar are the operating memorandum of understanding through the la

cruces and military control? >> not particularly, sir. >> it states the mobile communication site there in big hatchet peak will be moved as soon as possible if the area is designated as wilderness. it's there now, but if it's wilderness, it can't be there. suspect that an impediment? why wouldn't they put it somewhere else to start with if there was a better place? isn't that an impediment? >> that's an example, i understand that the peak there and if, in fact, legislation is passed, we need to work to ensure that it could stay there. it is -- >> no, i mean -- >> it is the opportunity location. >> it's called to be moved if it's designated will. that says the designation is trumping protection.

mr. vitiello, you declare wilderness and security are not exclusive. i know it's in the wilderness area, but the organ pipe national monument that i visited in 2006 declared it to be inhospitable for american travelers. is it still that way? >> no -- >> it's wide open, completely open to american tourists with no warnings? >> i don't know the status of the visitation for folk -- >> still, very alarming and that the warnings are gibb to american tourists not to be in the area. why doesn't that area fit into your 129 miles of secure border? >> the definition that gets us to the 129 miles is probably a lot longer conversation -- >> well -- >> that's tactical measure for agents in the field -- >> i want to know why organ pipe is not cleaned up? why haven't you stopped the traffic that is polluting the area, but also making it

dangerous? >> we've made good progress at organ pipe and throughout the sector -- >> you would send a boy scout troupe with your kids in it without your preenings? i don't think so, sir. i'm sorry, i was there. i saw the stuff. >> we made excellent progress since 2006, congressman. i -- >> i hear that. a rancher the year before was killed down in that area, and that was in retribution for him turning in the drug smugglers. the -- mr. jensen, we visited in secure border -- sequoia and there was booby traps, shot off shotguns, and massive area of drugs in the forest itself, is that cleaned up? >> i have to gabbing to the area

-- go back to the area to know. >> you're familiar to the circumstance? >> the circumstance -- >> do you have any other forests that are that, have that many incursions of illegal activity in it so people are warned don't go to this area because you can get your head blown off with a sawed off shotgun that has a trip wire on it. >> we don't talk about it that way. >> were the pictures given to me by the forest service incorrect? >> i have to see the photos to know for sure. >> yeah, yeah. you wouldn't talk about it, but the pictures may have been correct? they were given to me on official capacity in an official briefing, and so you would think it's incorrect that you hit a trip wire and it blows your head off with a sawed-off shotgun protecting a marijuana field in >> we want to make sure visitors going to the national forests are aware of the risks out there as in any time you go to the back country.

i can't speak to the specific situation. >> any other forrests where that danger exists? >> we are dealing with some similar issues down in the coronado national forest, and we make sure visitors to those areas are aware. >> this is one of two very, very dangerous category, and you don't know if it's been cleared up? that is alarming, my friend. >> i want to follow-up with you to understand further the concerns you have. >> still, you're in the position you're in and don't know if we have eliminated those. that's what concerns me about the testimony of all three of you here today that you're saying that there's no problem with wilderness or environmental rule, and yet you can't explain the most dangerous areas that exist right behind my back door, and thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. it's my intention to turn now to

mr. lynn. we'll get through this round of questioning. we have 5 or 6 minutes. we'll suspend for a few minutes, go vote, come back here probably around a 10 minute break if that's okay. representative lynch? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the witnesses for helping the committee with its work. i think part of the frustration exhibited by mr. chaffetz was well founded i think. it's real your result of the gao report, and i think this is an october 2010gao report on the southwest border, and gene was agenting then, -- acting then, and i have e enormous respect for him working with him on a number of issues. this report invites mr. mr. chaffetz's frustration. it says everything is fine.

that's what the political appointees and political folks say, everything's fine and we work together. when you talk about agents in challenge on the ground there, they say 17 of the 26 stations, you know, reported that there were limitations put on their ability to patrol those areas specifically the patrol agents in charge, 14 of 17 stations roberted they were unable to obtain a permit or permission to access certain areas in a timely mapper because of how long it takes to work with land management folks, and then earlier ms. thorsen, you conceded folks on the ground based on the chairman's questioning were applying a different standard for border agents to get into certain areas. that's of great concern, and i think you're in, by this inconsistency in what we want to happen down there and what is

happening, is going to invite legislation here because the mou is not being followed, and it's against the backdrop of a very serious situation. i have a report here that says we had 600 more civilian homicides in one border town, ciudad juarez in 2010 than we had in all of afghanistan. afghanistan's 30 million people, ciudad juarez is 1 million, 1.3 million, and there's 300 more homicides, and it's right on our border. i'll tell you, i'd be more angry than mr. chaffetz was this morning if i thought the safety of the people i represented was being ignored. you have to get your act together here. we expect you to protect the border, and we don't think that's happening. you say that you can do this,

get object on this and address the environmental concerns and still conduct robust security on the border, you need to do it. you need to do p. this is a, you know, this is a problem. you know, i think i've been to iraq and afghanistan about 22 times. i think i should be spending more time in mexico from reading these reports, and this is right on our boarder, and we can't forward to be slack anymore. i'm hoping that either you address it with a tighter description of what is permissible for the border security folks, or you just come to congress and say we can't resolve this, and why don't you do it on our behalf, but, you know, this can't continue. this cannot continue. the folks who live in the border towns in the mexico side and the united states side deserve better. we have to get serious about this.

i think, ms. thorsen, if there's folks on the ground applying a different standard restricting border patrol folks from going into the areas in a timely manner to protect people, you need a better response. i didn't hear you answer the question are folks being disciplined when they stop border security folks from beginning in there and doing their job? i didn't hear a yes. i heard, well, we have, you know, guidelines that allow us to do that, but i didn't hear of anybody being fired for blocking access to certain areas on the part of the security folks. mr. vitiello, you give a rosy picture, but the facts don't bear that out, sir. i'm sorry to say. we have to be better at this. like i said before, i'll close my remarks, but you're inviting,

you know, congress to go in there and decide what the rules are going to be, and 435 people are going to make that decision in the house and senate and it may not come out the way you think it will. it may not be a better solution than an mou, a cooperative mou between the two agencies is what i'm saying. i just ask you to, as mr. kildee suggested, you have to work together better and start living up to the terms of the mou and making sure our customs and border patrol folks have access to that area. thank you, i yield back. >> thank you, mr. lynch. just as information, 68% of organ pipe is still off limit to americans and 95% is wilderness. there's a second five minute vote and a third vote in 15 minutes. i'll ask members to vote and

come back here quickly. i'm estimating a 10 minute break to vote. i apologize for this. this is an abnormal day. the morning should have been reserved for this. i'm sorry about that. i hate to walk out on you. we'll get through this as quickly as possible. we have to take the break right now. thank you, and we'll be back shortly. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> we're going to try to step up here. obviously, some of the members are en route, and we'll work that through as time goes on. there's another vote coming up quickly. we want to get this panel on their way. a couple questions from my end as well, and i want to set the stage in the right frame the first time because i think the conversation earlier was a little disinjen win. when we talked about the mou not working or people understanding, we're not talking about folks on the ground, but we're talking high level individuals, the people on the ground of the national park who should know what the definitions are, and should not have a tizzy fit when the border patrol asks questions and they made a circle route instead of the three-point wide

turn he insisted on. we're talking about the park director who did not know the definition, the director of the utah -- utah? the u.s. fish and wildlife service who sent the letter to border patrol and did not put the definition in and threatened them with closeture. the definition is not working because people on the field don't understand it. people here in washington aren't getting it. the mou may work for the department of interior, but it's not helping national security, and that's the key issue to deal with. i want to deal with for a few minute the project in national organ pipe monument with the intersection of the border that was there. once again, mr. thorsen, the result of the negotiations with -- what was the result of the negotiations with border patrol over this project? >> well, at this point