tv Tonight From Washington CSPAN July 10, 2013 8:00pm-11:01pm EDT
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they are made aware of the possibility then rolling in these marketplaces would expect their representatives they are senators whether democratic or republican would help them in that process rather than doing everything they can to prevent their constituents from enjoying the benefits of the affordable care act. see the republicans but did say on the issue of immigration if the white house can simply decide to delay implementation of certain aspects of those they have passed. >> again people who suggest that there's anything unusual about the delaying of the deadline and implementation of of the complex lot are deliberately sticking their heads in the sand or willfully ignorant about past president. it's not serious and we are going about the business of implementing this will and implement in a way that maximize the benefits available to the american people that minimizes difficulties in implementation process for businesses as well
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as individuals and we are going to keep at it. this be. >> the chairman of the house homeland security committee was critical of the fbi at a hearing on the boston marathon bombings. that is next on c-span2. then remarks from federal reserve chairman ben brinkley. >> the problem was that darwin did not understand that with such a very natural selection could never have really worked because imagine you have a population of a million white 10 million white cats and one red cat and suppose being a black cat does provide you with some big advantages but in this blended you mix things like jenna and tonic the black cats made with with the white cat and you get a gray cat trait that gray cat mates with another
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white cat and you get a paler shade of gray cat and this thing just gets diluted and deluded. the advantage will disappear and never appear again. former new york city mayor rudy giuliani testified before a house panel investigating the boston marathon bombings. we will also hear from a former national counterterrorism center director. at this house homeland security hearing committee chairman mccaul was critical of the fbi's handling of the marathon investigation.
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[inaudible conversations]. >> the committee on homeland security will come to order. the committee is meeting to continue our series of hearings examining the boston bombings of april 15, 2013. i now recognize myself for an opening statement. i want to thank the witnesses were appearing here today. this is an open hearing open hearing in today we will vote on convening a closed session.
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tomorrow to receive classified testimony on the department of homeland security and the national counterterrorism center. unfortunately the f. ei has refused to appear and continues to refuse this committee's appropriate requests for information and documents crucial to our investigation into what happened in boston. three months ago there was a terrorist attack in our country and it is this committee's responsibility to find out how we did not see it coming. what concerns me greatly is that the problem at the heart of the boston bombings is the failure to share information and that is being witnessed now in this very room. the information requested by this committee belongs to the american people. it does not belong solely to the fbi. i sincerely hope they do not intend to stonewall our inquiry into how this happened. i said when i started this investigation that we were going to find out what happened what went wrong and how to fix fix i.
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i will not be satisfied until we get the answers that the american people deserve. as dzhokhar arrives in court today justice is this beginning. today we turn to making sure what he did is prevented from ever happening again. just weeks ago i walked the streets of boston with my colleague bill keating and while the cities was going on since trying for obvious everywhere we went out this attack could have occurred despite multiple warnings with still not clear. in many ways the boston bombings serve as an assessment of our counterterror efforts over a decade after 9/11 and our investigation will look at how far we have come and what must be changed to better protect our homeland. today by looking at other domestic terror attacks on our soil in addition to the boston bombings we seek to identify systematisystemati c vulnerabilities in our defenses
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which could have helped prevent these attacks and future threats. since 9/11 the great challenge to our vast homeland security apparatus remains an connecting the dots. how much information is available we must ensure we have the best system possible for sharing intelligence. particularly when information so clearly warrants additional scrutiny as it did with cameron and tsarnaev. in this case will the fbi investigated the other suspect this case was not reopened after his travel overseas to a hotbed of jihad is terrorism. ultimately as we refine their approach counterterrorism policies in this type of failure to follow up was not continued. this is particularly important as the administration seeks to return to a pre-9/11 approach to fighting terrorism on our soil. the policy perpetrated by its narrative in the conflict of radical islamist is ending.
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unfortunately the redhaired perpetrated by the administration with the threat of al qaeda is diminishing and its franchises are less dangerous is not the reality of the united states faces today. for evidence of this inspire magazine which praises the brothers and encourages other extremist to to similar attacks. attacks. terrace with any of us who are inspired by jihad is rhetoric presented a threat and must be looked at as any less deadly. in light of boston that's more important than ever to find weaknesses in our counterterror efforts that can be fixed before another attack is attempted. by reviewing the events leading to the last five attempts in the homeland since 9/11 we will find patterns that will shed light on the west we must improve for instance in june 2009 terrorist target in army-navy career center in little rock arkansas killing one soldier and wounding
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another. carlos bledsoe and american citizen converted to islam and spent 16 months in yemen at a jihad training camp. bledsoe had been interviewed by the fbi twice before the shooting once in yemen and again and while one person agencies were concerned he may have ties to extremist groups they did not pursue the matter. the shooting at ford and the texas in my home state in november of 2009 is another example of government officials either failing to recognize or failing to pursue a credible threat and major the doll has found a become radicalized by their superiors failed to discipline or discharge him. the fbi was aware that song was communicating with terrorists anwar awlaki a year prior to his attack where he killed 13 people and wounded 33 others. ultimately this information was not shared with fort hood.
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the 2009 attempted attack and christmas day is yet another example of agencies failing to connect the dots. umar farouk abdullah ahmad trollope his father reported his son's hatred of the west and the u.s. embassy but one agency failed to alert another. the times square bomber a naturalized citizen warned pakistan was placing a traveler and enforcement compliance system between 1998 and 2008. however this computer system does not share information effectively among databases and consequently shows sought to sell off the radar's reign only to have -- not the bomb from going off and finally the boston marathon bombings. they show that one agency failed to share critical information about terrorists they fail to see the full picture which could
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point to an eminent attack. we still do not know if the fbi was alerted to camera lens plus travel overseas but we do know that no action was taken after-the-fact and the deputy director of the fbi said even if they had been notified about that travel the case was closed and it would not have been helpful. these events bring to light two areas that deserve scrutiny by this committee. the first thing one the information still piped between agencies and the second being that their agencies need to update their policies in order to be number one of up to confront the current dynamic threat to this country. it's easy to see why this absolutely must be done when we read the words of our enemy in the most recent issue of hq ap inspire magazine which praised the tsarnaev brothers in the boston bombings. in one segment of poem written under the name sub nine declares
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both residing in the west grab your chance and walked steadfastly torture girl. as for me in yemen whenever i move around with explosives around my waist i wish i am an american. those chilling words make it clear they were enemies that applaud the actions of camera lens dzhokhar and they will try again and again and we must be better prepared. without the chair recognizes the ranking member. >> thank you for calling today's hearing in june 2009 carlos bledsoe shot two people in a recruiting center in little rock arkansas.
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he was found guilty and is serving a life sentence. in november 2009 the doll has fun in nature -- not open fire and forget it texas. jury selection in this trial his trial begins this week. in december 2009 christmas day bomber was arrested in michigan after trying to detonate an explosive aboard a plane. he was convicted and is serving for life sentences in a prison in colorado. in may 2010 he tried to detonate the bomb in times square. he was convicted and is serving a life sentence in a federal prison
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the other make sense first appearance in federal court today so i would like to begin today's hearing by pointing out the seller marries in this limited selection of cases. with the exception of the boston marathon bombings each of these attacks were perpetrated by a lone actor. all of these attackers have faced trial in the united states and have been convicted and are serving lengthy sentences. it appears those that committed these attacks were radicalized and turned to violence through contacts outside the united states. in at least two cases the primary means of violent radicalization appears to have come from on line context and in at least three cases the attackers were disillusioned and disgruntled young men. it was seen that these cases stand from several propositions. first the federal court system
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is perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases. as a matter fact in 2009 alone the department of justice charged more defendants with terrorism related charges than any other federal crime. second, because none of these cases will work carried out by an organized group it was saying that terrorists have changed their methods. they have shifted their focus to identifying and isolating particular individuals. a change in tactics by our adversaries should cause us to change our response. here are our response should focus on acts perpetrated by lone wolf violent extremists. third because none of these attacks were carried out by an organized group we can conclude that our efforts abroad have been successful in disrupting their networks. fourth, because these attacks by
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disillusioned young men are focused on teaching state or local officials and community leaders to effectively engage in situations which may cause these roots of anger to grow. prevention is likely to be more cost-effective than surveillance , trials or worse and while this hearing focuses on attacks carried out by muslim americans these lessons we should take from this hearing should not focus on any particular religious group. over 10 years after september 11 we must expand our focus. by now we should know that terrorist violence is not limited to any particular ideology or nation. as a southern poverty law center reporter in march 2013 the number of conspiracy minded anti-government patriot groups on the american radical right reached an all-time high in
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2012, the fourth consecutive year of growth. the southern poverty law center includes that these groups will continue to grow and become more militant during president obama second term and two to the national debate on gun control measures. so it seems that we are here to be proactive. we should take the lessons we have learned since september 11 and apply them to the evolving face of terror both at home and abroad. additionally if we are here to be proactive we should focus on where the systems have failed, the polar abilities that remain and the constructive actions available to this congress. for instance we need to understand why one of the accused boston bombers was listed on to federal databases but was available to travel to russia. we need to understand the best and most cost-effective way to fix that problem. in essence we can point the
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finger or we can find a solution. the choice is ours. in the past we have not always chosen the path to problem solving. for instance the christmas day bombing case showed vulnerability in the check point screening machines used at the airports. even though the terrorists did not ward a flight in the united states the government spent about $800 million on screening machines. today those machines have been removed from the airports because americans decided that they were not willing to give up their privacy for security. a few years and $800 million i hope we have found a solution that allows us to preserve privacy while maintaining security. also we are here to be proactive. we need to understand that solutions cannot be reached
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without dialogue and an open discussion of the facts. at least two of the cases we are here to examine and get to be tried in a court of law. once a verdict has been rendered by geri i hope we can look at the evidence in the 43rd and boston marathon cases but at this point our conclusions are likely to be premature and our discussions may undermine a conviction. i'm not willing to make anyone escape punishment because of ports spoken in this realm. mr. chairman i share your concerns about terrorism in this country since september 11 and look forward to a full discussion of actions this congress should undertake in a constructive and bipartisan manner. i bet. >> i thank the ranking member and in corresponding with government witnesses and members of the second panel indicated the topic we we are examining ty is of a sensitive nature and the
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answers to your questions may endanger national security or compromise sensitive lot for some information therefore it appears the best path forward for this hearing is to recess after the first panel has concluded and we can being in an executive classified session therefore pursuant to rule 11 of the house of representatives on live at the hearing be closed to the public at that time. section 969 of the house manual demotion is in order. it is not debatable. the motion is now subject to a recorded vote. the clerk will call the roll. [roll call]
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know we have gone over the last couple of the leaks with the public expressing concern not particularly the topic of this hearing but particularly concerned about their own security and their own privacy. this vote might be interpreted as a committee desiring to hide information from the public. i know that those of us who voted did not want to hide information from the public and i'm sympathetic to their rights to read this and civil liberties. my inquiry would be that this hearing being closed is specifically to protect information that direct we is perceived by those witnesses to have a direct rational security impact and it is not intended to hide vital information from the american public. i yield to the gentleman. >> the gentlelady is correct and i appreciate you making that point. it's unfortunate the fbi has declined to attend in this closed session.
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the motion is agreed to. see i thank the chairman. see the committee will recess at the conclusion of the first panel and will reconvene at 9:00 a.m. on thursday july 9. the clerk will send a notice to motors -- not members. we are pleased to have three distinguished members to discuss this important topic. first we are very pleased and i did have the honorable rudolph giuliani who needs little introduction here. he served as mayor player city from 1994 to 2002 must never be serving as mayor during the terrorist attack of september the 11th 2001. prior to his service as mayor mr. giuliani served as u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york which many would argue is the best attorney's office in the nation from 1983 to 1989. after that in his career mr. giuliani received many
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awards and accommodations including being named "time" magazine's person of the year 2001 and receiving the honorary knighthood from queen elizabeth ii in 2002. thank you so much for being here. the honorablhonorabl e michael lighter served under two presidents is to record the national counterterrorism center until, from june 2008 to july july 2011. he remains a highly respected voice on terrorism threats and national security. currently he is a senior counsel to the chief executive officer. in addition he serves as a national security and counterterrorism analyst. dr. bruce hoffman is the director of the center for security studies and a tenured professor at georgetown university school of foreign service. professor hoffman was in residence for counterterrorism at the central intelligence agency between 2004 and 2006 and
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served as an adviser on counterterrorism to the coalition provisional authority in baghdad iraq during the spring of 2004. thank you both michael lighter and dr. hoffman for being here today. the witnesses and will appear in the record and the chair recognizerecognize s mayor giuliani for five minutes for an opening statement. >> the privilege to testify before you on this important subject. since september 112001 there is rarely a day that goes by that i'm not asked by someone are we safer today than we were before september 11? and the answer to that question is it doesn't include yester know. in some ways the answer is yes we are safer and in other ways we just haven't given it enough attention to certain areas that
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make us vulnerable are we haven't anticipated. i would say that probably the prevailing view right now among security experts is that we have improve their safety and security with regard to attacks by air. we have improved their safety and security with regard to attacks by very large well recognized and identified terrorist groups but that we are now much more vulnerable to attack by a single individual or much smaller groups who are acting on their own. we are seeing a few very recent attacks like that, boston being one of them little rock for david for that the attempted attack in times square at the successful attack at fort dix and the air attack foiled over detroit. and of course the one in boston was probably the one that got
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everyone riveted around the idea that the single small attacks are now something that we have to really worry about. but they really are not new. they affect the gone back for quite some time and maybe in some way is a feeling of hours that it takes us so long to identify these things as a new method of attack. a new method of attack in boston goes that to at least 2005 in london then essentially a very similar kind of thing happens. homegrown terrorists in england, people who are u.k. citizens in a very surprising way to the u.k. authorities attacked the city of london. it just so happens i was there that day and observed that attack and got very involved in the aftermath of the. from that point on we all should've been alerted to the fact that this is a very deliberate part of the islamic
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extremist ideology to use single individuals smaller groups as a way of attacking us. going back to the early part of the century bin laden was encouraging people to do that. so maybe one of the things we we can examine is what it takes us so long, 10 years to recognize this is a new form of attack when in fact this is a very old form of attack. the individuals on the smaller groups that do these attacks largely operate on their own but usually bear some training or encouragement from a more organized established outside group and these small but that's extremist jihad is the message. sometimes with outside encouragement and sometimes with support very rarely completely on their own. these self generated terrorists operate in ways that take them
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them -- though much harder to detect and sometimes just as dangerous as the more highly organized groups. they are more difficult to detect because they engage in many fewer electronic wire communications with organizations that we have under physical or technological surveillance. or that we have ample treated with undercover agents. large international group that is going to carry out a terrorist plot almost has to trip over some of our things that we have put their detect them. they have to communicate by phone. they have to transfer money. they have to transfer equipment. they almost always have to deal with someone who is giving us information. the chances of architecting a large well organized plot is much greater than a young man or two young men in boston or new york or planning on their own to do this where maybe they would make a few contacts there are
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relatively few when it comes to public intelligence every day. why two people were motivated on their own by reading inspired magazine following jihad is web sites attending mosques that encourage islands and certainly not all mosques due to any means but it would be foolish to ignore the fact that some mosques inspired terrorism. indeed the first attack that really shocked the country in 1993 in my city was inspired in a mosque in union city new jersey by a muslim cleric who is now serving two years in prison. these are much much harder to detect in these individuals act alone can be extremely dangerous. it is although they operate independent of one another and it is perfectly accurate to describe them as independent actors sometimes that is deceiving because these independent actors are connected
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by a very well-defined common cause islamic extremism. even if no single act of theirs can do the damage of the september 11, 2010. smaller more frequent attacks that can kill people shocked the country and show us how polar but we are can just as well serve the goal of these jihad is to groups which is after all to destabilize us and to make us become less confident in our system of government. so how do we deal with these sporadic smaller groups? how do we change our approach to terrorism so that we can detect them as effectively as we have been able to detect the march larger groups? as a threshold matter we should begin by stopping doing what we are doing on the larger groups. this is actually been a very effective and it would be very
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fortunate if we were to take some resources away from dealing with the larger groups in order to deal with the smaller groups. this should be an expansion of what we do rather than in any way a contraction of what we do because these groups still pose a mortal threat to us. these large groups are planning to bomb us and some spectacular when any attempt to back off of that and the thought that we have conquered them would be exceedingly unrealistic and very very dangerous. we are by no means well organized an islamic terrorist groups and whether we recognize we are at war with them it's almost completely irrelevant. because they are at war with us.
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the real question is are we going to recognize they are at war with us or are we going to fool ourselves into a dangerous state of denial? however the first thing we must recognize about about the smaller groups is we have to be able to identify them with precision. if ireland jihad to some as an ideological serial killer in a way to catch a serial killer which i have had some experience with is to recognize a connection between the murders and find the common threads and the shared motivation to the devious acts and then hopefully as early as possible catch the serial killer. if you go on for years not recognizing the common threads and being afraid to identify the common threads because you're so afraid of political correct is that those serial killings go on and determined up late. it is absolutely vital that we identify our enemy correctly
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because it's very hard to find someone that you don't identify correctly. these attacks on our homeland and other such is the 2005 london bombings have been connected by a common motivation and a singular purpose. the underwear bomber times square attempt this are not yet brothers major hassan announced and forget he was killing in the name of allah and all the terrorists what they jihad his goal of islamic domination and the murder of free and innocent people who may regard as simple goals in order to accomplish that goal. failure to recognize these common threads leads to a great deal of wasted effort in analyzing the avalanche of data presented to intelligence analysts every day. we often describe it and it's accurate that these people are looking for a needle in a haystack and it's not just any needle. it's a needle if a needle that
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has very clear identifiable characteristics. so in order to confront this threat effectively we have to purge ourselves of the practice of political correctness when it goes so far that it interferes with our rational and intellectual honest analysis of the identifying characteristics that help us to discover these killers in advance. for example in business with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been a much greater chance of preventing four to, and possibly in the sample size is possibly the boston bombings if they're relevant or overseas have been less reluctant to identify the eventual killers as potential islamic extremist terrorists. bureaucracies respond to the message that they get from above. leadership in government requires understanding that the signal sent by a chief executive, the president, a
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governor, the mayor, the head of the police department the head of the fbi affect the behavior or overseas. they respond to that. the message conveyed from the top that it's inappropriate to label someone islamic extremists no matter how compelling the proof will make bureaucracies reluctant to pursue leads that would otherwise be pursued. you can't fight an enemy if the party line is to never use the word islamic islamic extremist terrorists if there is a reluctance to label something as a jihad is packed out and the results after that is a bureaucracy that is paralyzed by greater fear of being wrong it certainly explains the failure to identify major
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hassan. despite her repeated indication of his views not only to political correctness fail to identify him as a terrorist that is being promoted to the united states army. that political correct this extended so far that the current administration describes as at this workplace violence. this is unjust preposterous. what we fail to realize is this is dangerous to do this. it leads to all sorts of mistakes being made by the bureaucracy who realized that they can identify people correctly without making sure that they're going to be in trouble and even at this date it would surely be anonymously helpful if a ford attack were described as an act of terror. after all the man was yelling allah akbar as he was
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slaughtering people. we don't need to discover his motivation. he explained his motivation to us. we just fail to listen to it. the application of political correctness to the investigation of tamerlan tsarnaev and his brother prior to the boston bombing is not as clear. i can't be certain that played a role in a failure to investigate with the figure and the intensity that in hindsight it seems should have been done but it's certainly a question worth asking. what other steps have been taken since the fear was so great that you might make a mistake and identify someone as an islamic extremist terrorist who wasn't. that is certainly something that is actually required to pursue. expanding our defenses against these isolated or smaller groups is going to require a different strategy. it's going to require a
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significant involvement of local law enforcement. the genesis of this terrorism is domestic which it obviously is than our our only chance to detectives are only real chance to detected in the answers of the fbi never -- other federal agencies use law enforcement as their eyes and ears. there are only about 12 to 13,000 agents in the entire world. there are 35,000 new york city police officers for one city. there are 800,000 police officers in our country. 12,000 fbi agents, 35,000 police officers, 800,000 police officers nationwide. if you're trying to find a needle in a haystack in a community in america and the fbi cannot do it. they just another another number to do it. the new york city police department the boston and los angeles police have the numbers to do it. and the reality is that they have to be trained in how to
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detect terrorism. former police commissioner william bratton who is my police commissioner in new york and police commissioner in los angeles has developed an excellent protocol called the precursors of terrorism that things have police officers can be trained to do to look for terrorists. they get the signs of a possible terrorist threat. over the past 15 years and certainly over the past 2000 because i've been involved in portland for 2000 years i think that going back to the 1960s and 1970s i worked with the fbi and local police, the fbi has made anonymous progress in bringing in state and local law enforcement. the level of cooperation today is light-years ahead of what it was when i first got involved in law enforcement in the 1970s. the joint terrorism task force in new york city which was established back in the 1970s i worked with both capacities as a united states attorney basic in charge of what they were doing and as the mayor player
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city who supplied police officers and the level of cooperation very superb. i could give you one example after another terrorist acts they have prevented in new york when i was u.s. attorney and when i was mayor and now with mayor bloomberg but the reality is more has to be done in order to foster this cooperation. i don't know if the committee will find out if the f. a. i probably notified the boston police and was their notification within the j. ptf? apparently they didn't get to the police chief. i believe there was an obligation to notify whether it happened or didn't happen the fbi doesn't know if the man
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is a suspected terrorist or not where would you go immediately? where should you go immediately to get information about that collects the police department and the place where this man lives not just to notify them but to ask for their help and all the information they have and asked him to put them under surveillance as them to watch. when the men engaged in a very strange act of going to russia and going to russia should have been just a massive ad, should have set off all kinds of alarms. if if i am correct about this is family left russia and obtain political asylum in the united states saying that if they went back to russia they would be persecuted. now all of a sudden he is going back to russia and no one connected the dots. the place he's being persecuted in the place he is going back to. he obviously wasn't going back to listen to the moscow symphony. he had to be going back for a purpose that was nefarious and those dots weren't connected.
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that information was not passed on to the boston police when he returned to would have been in would have been in a position to put him under surveillance. the fbi could not do not do that with a small force is then than that is the area i would examine that i think would be of great that the two unforced men. did the connection get made? i don't know, maybe it did and if it didn't get a flight to make it made him most important for our future in the and the future let's make certain it does get made because this is not the last act like this we are going to face. so i think you have very important questions to ask and in assessing our level of danger from our defenses against terrorism both president george w. bush and president barack obama had continually warned us matter how effective we are we have to succeed one or 2% of the time and the terrorists only have to succeed one time. other with presidents are utterly correct and because of
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that our response to terrorism in america must be suggested to constructive criticism and excruciating analysis. it must be free of political correctness and it must be constantly reevaluated to reduce our percentage of failure and terrorism -- of terrorism do is close to zero as possible and that is what you are engaged in and i very much respect what you are doing. see thank you mayor, thank you so much for being here and your insightful paramount -- testimony. >> mr. chairman ranking member thompson and members of the committee it's a pleasure to be in front of you and with mayor giuliani and his half men to counterterrorism icons. before reflecting on devices where we are not perfect and want to begin with some of our successes because in truth they are a lot more prevalent than the tragic counterparts and i am always very careful in saying this because the loss of 18
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people is a tragedy and i don't want to underestimate that. i have met at dover air force base the bodies of our fallen soldiers. so i i don't want to make light about the losses we have suffered. but frankly in my view it is nothing short of remarkable that since 9/11 we have had a total of 18 people killed in the homeland by al qaeda inspired terrorism. 13 export therefore david, one at little rock and four in boston most recently. these are all tragic and they have an army psychological effect on the entire country but my view is told is simply astounding and i would venture a potentially dangerous guess but if i would ask the members of this committee on september 122001, and the americans would be killed a terrorist in the united states over the subsequent 12 years not one of the would you would say 18 and many of you would say
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1800 some of you might say 18,000. so iraq is far from perfect but it's pretty good. in my view view the roots of the this success come in many forms. first incredibly successful offensive strikes in pakistan and yemen and elsewhere that have crushed al qaeda overseas. excellent human and technical surveillance and intelligence to penetrate these networks abroad and domestically. improved screening of travelers and cargo traveling to the u.s.. fastly accelerating improved information-sharing among federal agencies improve domestic counterterrorism intelligence investigations led by the fbi but as the mayor intimated them in conjunction with dhs and more importantly state and local authorities. as we saw in boston and first responder and community preparedness after an attack to reduce the consequences of that attack and finally a piece which
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i think is central and often gets lost in the counterterrorism dialogue unfortunately community and richmond especially with the american-muslim community to reduce the attractiveness of the message and ensure the community feels they are one with the government's attention. so the concrete result of this is a very long list but very briefly the 2011 arrest of khalid in texas, the 2010 disruption of the attempt to take down two u.s. cargo planes by al qaeda in the arabian peninsula now she publicize a's arrest as he attempted -- who plotted to attack the mayor city trains, the 2000 attack at fort dix to us to attack soldiers and 2006 the disruption of operation to down numerous airliners. again our defenses aren't perfect but i want to stress and
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i say this completely and politically we have to accept the counters and protection is possible. this isn't an excuse. i take responsibility for those plots that i didn't help stop and we didn't stop before an attack happened but we do have to have realistic expectations that we don't have partisan witchhunt after-the-fact. so what should the american people expect? that it is far less likely that we have large-scale successful attacks and it is significantly less likely we have small-scale attacks but even some of the examples the committee is mentioned as failures i would note it is a layering of counterterrorism defenses which help make them not be successful. the case of times square, it is undoubtedly true we did not identify faisal shahzad before the fact that one of the reasons his bomb failed was faisal shahzad and if the fbi had tripwire programs in place and if he bought you bought a certain type of fertilizer they
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would be tipped off. the result, a body type of fertilizer that would not explode. in the case of the christmas day palmer once again we failed to identify an individual but what was al qaeda in the arabian nights were forced to do? use a detonator that was less likely and in fact fail to work. all of that being said what are some good lessons i would learn and urge this committee to learn from the five plots where we did not fully succeed? first and i think i have a slightly different view than the mayor on this but i agree with -- recognizing radicalization is undoubtedly critical. when to improve our training and we can't be afraid to train. both the fbi and state and local officials so they understand radicalization and i do think at least in the case of fort hood a failure to recognize that radicalization process and major hasan's violent inclinations were a factor in not stopping that thought but with that i
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must say in my 6.5 years working intelligence and power -- not countertecounterte rrorism for two presents the idea that political correctness and in a systematic way affected our efforts to find, locate and either kill or arrest terrorists is simply beyond me. second, al qaeda inspired messages on the internet are here to stay and we have to do more to understand them, track check them and to some extent disrupt them. i think the case of boston is an interesting one and i do believe that the fbi and homeland security state and local officials need to work together or closely to allocate responsibility to monitor those very went to web sites that produce some of the radicalizing influence as we have seen in some of these cases. i believe this is a current weakness.
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third, the shift from radicalization to mobilization is incredibly hard to detect and is resource intensive. if we could put surveillance on everyone who is radicalized this would be pretty easy. we watch them in when they moved to violence would stop them. we can't. we can't the the federal resources and mccann with state and local resources. they are too many and detecting that tipping point where someone moves from radicalized and mobilized is the hardest piece and i believe in the case of carlos bledsoe the federal government failed to do that effectively that it is not clear to me that there were resources in place that would have been able to follow sufficiently to stop the shooting of army the army recruiting center. fourth, information-sharing within the u.s. government has to be maintained and i think the case of fort hood does represent a failure to share information between the fbi and the department of defense and the failure to provide some information to the national
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counterterrorism center and similar organizations. this has to continue to be pressed and in light of what we have heard heard about nsa surveillance i believe this committee must continue to press the executive branch to make sure this information is provided to the agencies that can connect the dots one that is possible. fifth, joint terrorism task force of the fbi are critical and do excellent work but they don't do everything. the piece which met in person and boston bombing is those cases that the fbi and the jttf cannot continue to investigate. when i don't have the resources and they deem something not to be a sufficient threat in those cases we must create a better system linking the fbi state and local fusion centers and state and local authorities to protect the smaller pieces. in my view although we have invested enormous amounts of state and local fusion centers over the past 12 years the
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fusion centers and the jttf and state and local officials are not sufficiently tied together. chairman mccaul and mikey member thompson i think you have known me for the past several years to be very committed to this problem. i would urge this committee to keep the pressure on the administration but to also provide the service we must get american people to convince them that the members of the federal government state and local officials are not spying for the sake of spying in u.s. the committee are in fact holding the executive ranch's feet to the fire to ensure their civil liberties and privacy are being protected. i think ms. lee ms. jackson-lee for making the statement. much of this cannot be spoken about here but as much as we'd can we must because without the trust of the american people the fbi, the cia cia and the department home and secure in the police department across this country will be looked at as the enemy and we cannot allow
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that to happen because once that happens our efforts to actually stop these terrorist acts will be seriously be seriously undermined. steve thank you director leiter. the chair recognizes professor hoffman for five minutes to speech or mccaul ranking member thompson and distinguished members of the committee my humble apologies for being so late and my apologies to your staff and also to my fellow witnesses. thank you for the opportunity to testify. it's a great honor to do so. today the core al qaeda organization is on the verge of chickie to collapse. however even though al qaeda may be in decline of qaeda isn't. the movement ideology continues to resonate and attract terrorists. al qaeda does remains an appealing brand in north and west africa as well as in the font. the movement also retains its visceral nature to the united states and the west along with the potential to inspire and
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motivate individuals to engage in deadly acts of homegrown terrorism as the likely saw the last april in boston. for more than a decade of qaeda has installed arguably the greatest onslaught against terrorist organizations in history. further its consistently showing itself capable of adapting and adjusting to even the most consequential countermeasures directed against it, having despite all odds survive for a quarter of a century. throughout its history the oxygen of qaeda depends upon has taken possession of or access to sanctuary or safe haven. in the wake of the the air of spring and the acid buildup followed a qaeda has the potential to transfer told holz established in the sinai and the north and west africa. does complement the existing outpost in pakistan and afghanistan yemen and somalia.
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hence while osama bin laden's death can inflicted a crushing blow on the credits not clear is necessarily a fair one. today i'll qaeda's one situated in more places than it was on september 11, 2001. it maintains a presence in some 14 different theaters of operation compared to have as many as recently as five years ago. although some of these operational environment or more more for stable than others such as southeast asia others have become sites of revival and resuscitation such as in iraq north africa and syria nigeria mauritania and notch road. al qaeda has been able to achieve the unthinkable radicalizing citizens or residents united states and canada and inspiring and motivating terrorist acts went on their own such as occurred in for good taxes in 2009 birth of
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direction and behest of al qaeda senior leadership such as the plot to stage suicide bomb attacks on the new york city subway system in 2009 or the more recent plot in canada that was orchestrated by al qaeda commanders based in iran. the continuing challenge of of the united states will face if al qaeda's core ideology remains attractive both to a hard-core radicals and is also capable of drawing new appearance into its ranks. even in death on wire a lucky still the preeminent recruiting sergeant in the village's workers to the struggle or concern i have others. centuries long conflict between russia and chechnya. the violence inflicted on muslims in general and muslim women and children around the world has been cited by many other homegrown terrorists as a salient motivating factor in their politicization and radicalization. this may also explain why the american invasions in iraq and afghanistan were cited by so
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cars or night if as the reasons behind the bombing in the boston marathon. there is no one path. individuals will always be attracted to violence in different ways. these radicalize persons come from every walk of life to marginalize people working menial jobs some with long criminal records with histories of juvenile to link the sake of persons from upper-middle-class backgrounds from the universe and perhaps graduate degrees. indeed the common element in the radicalization reflects these individual state commitment to their faith recently discovered in their admiration of terrorist movements were leading terrorist figures leaving terrorist figures who they see as having struck a cathartic blow against the current enemies wherever they are and whoever they might be. hatred of their adopted homes especially in the united states the west and are profoundly shared sense of alienation from their host countries. at the start of the war on
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terrorism a dozen years ago the enemy was clear and plainly inside. it was a large terrorist organization situated mostly in one geographic location and it was good by an identifiable leader. today when the borders between domestic and international terrorism have blurred when our adversaries are not only identifiable terrorist organizations but enigmatic individuals a complete rethinking of our counterterrorism policies and architectures needed. ..
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for the most part i think as he you pointed out, they have been very successful. they are all in the same room, the walls have been taken down, they talk to each other not the way they're supposed to work. in the case of boston, it raises some concerns. i wanted to echo a few points that you made as well. the police commissioner testified before the committee and he is currently testifying for the senate as we speak. his testimony was interesting. when i asked if he knew about the russian women come his answer was no. and i asked if he knew that the fbi had opened up to promote
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investigation and his answer was no. did you know that he traveled overseas, which in the context of this, that is what they want us about, that he was going to travel overseas to me with extremists and come back. the answer was no. in spite of the fact that he has poured a boston police officers on this. he didn't know about it. the boston police did not know about it. to me, that is an issue. and to make the assertion that even if they knew this, to make the assertion that that would've made any difference because the case is closed, it raises another set of issues. when i talked and we went to boston, he said that the thing is that it's the hardest for me to say i didn't know about it. but i didn't know about it. and he said, my guys know that the fbi does their job and they do it well. as you pointed out, mayor, local
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law enforcement is the eyes and ears. and you have 800,000 police officers nationwide. 35,000 of them in new york. because new york has stood out. so it seems to me that is a great force multiplier. here we are after 9/11, and we still are have not seen that kind of coordination taking place. when the fbi says we don't have the resources, why don't you leverage state and local, they want to help. the boston police wanted to be a part of this. they wanted to be at the table. they wanted to know about the russian morning. there certainly weren't that many foreign threats coming in the boston area. it is a general question. twelve years later, what has gone wrong here and what can we do to fix this.
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>> i do not know if what went wrong is systemic briefing that happened within the organization. i don't know if information was communicated so that one of the four boston police knew about this and they didn't communicated to their cheap commissioner or it wasn't communicated to police officers. i don't know. i don't know if it was an individual thing that went wrong. but if you ask me what does the new strategy need to be to deal with the threat of isolated individual smaller groups, the emphasis becomes critical here. because you're talking about a large international group like al qaeda. and the cia and the fbi will be the main actors in being able to find them. but if you say to me that the
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threat now is to young men living in boston or someone living in philadelphia or new york or las vegas, they are only going to find them with the local police. in my experience of four years of working with the fbi and local police and whatever come it seems to me that the breakdown when it happens, and it happens less often now, the fbi shares a lot more than it ever did 20 years ago. the breakdown comes about and they say that we cannot trust the local police. they might make a few exceptions. they say that we can trust new york or boston, but we cannot trust the local police because they will leak the information. maybe even inadvertently because they are not as professional as we are. but the fbi should do is honestly confront them with the police department.
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we can share with us department of that department. and we want to work with you to train them and we are confident we can share information with them. even the fbi occasionally had weeks. if the fbi isn't comfortable sharing this with local law enforcement come in and the fbi has to take the initiative to confront local on enforcement and get local law enforcement in that particular area. because we can no longer deal with this or not sharing information. we will miss it if the federal government doesn't engage local police department and a very big way. the only way to find them in
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small groups. i am giving you my experience more than what happened in boston, but whenever i am confronted with a situation, even when i was the mayor and they didn't get the information i thought they should get, very often we are not sure about the riyadh and turn a liability of this particular unit. the new company in advance and tell me that you're not. let's straighten it out. because it's really important that we share this information. >> thank you. even at the federal level, we don't know that the fbi got the travel information on them. going back to the state and local, you know, when it comes to that, you get these radicalized you to websites and
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he was kicked out of a mosque, again, they could've taken a second look at this individual. but i understand that 2020 is hindsight. order some of the current things you would recommend. i know many can't even talk to their police chiefs. >> in this case it probably would have been to cambridge police department. it's a much smaller department. but you're not always when i'm a situation where the local police department is being represented. it is becoming more and more the case. my understanding about how it works includes how they could've asked for permission to share that with their cheap. that is so they know where the
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information has gone. i think that is probably a good protocol. it means that it doesn't get shared. i do think a more systemic basis, we need to make sure that when an investigation is included, that that is effectively shared with the departments of the department can decide whether he really should be concluded to whether or not they can do more. i have to add. you understand as an attorney, mr. chairman, there are real civil liberty issues here. in many instances, sharing information about this and the local police keep quite surveillance on us.
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>> i would agree. in this case, the russian morning threat was filled by the travel, which i think takes it to a whole other level. so with that, it is over expired. on recognize the ranking member for questions. >> spirit mr. chairman, i do not disagree that this is something that the fbi or anyone would want to know and consider. it is my understanding they were not notified and the conclusion should be closed. but my point is when we share this information, which i think needs to be done, local police have an understanding and this needs to be done in a systematic way that the boston police, the cambridge police, they can say
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that these cases the fbi is done with and do we care about them in some way and what should we do about them. then they also have to make the decision that this is okay. so that requires oversight in massachusetts and washington to make sure that that is not being done in an inappropriate manner. >> thank you. i think that we have one of a lot of information. congress also try to legislate this. we told the cia that you must start speaking more to the fbi and so we did. but a longer wait to do this, we
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ran up on something that we need to know. >> have you seen a lessening of that, or are we still kind of in this culture of telling people just what you want them to know rather than a hearing of intelligence? i must ask this similar kind of question. >> this confuses me because there is a situation that is not need to know but need to get help. seems to me that the fbi should have communicated with the local police, boston, cambridge,
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whatever. all of them to get help. not just to let them know. the fbi was presented with a significant fact. the russians identified this man as a suspected terrorist. the fbi might have thought that russia was misleading us. so where are you going to get information about this? >> the man lived in boston. for quite some time. he would go to the boston police and say, what you know about this. that is the part that i do not understand. it needs no part, i think that due to the efforts of congress, both president bush and president obama, i think a lot has changed to the positive and that is why this is the more
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unusual circumstance. twenty years ago, this would've been the usual thing that happened. largely because the fbi and sharing more now than it did before. i don't know why they didn't go to the local police not only to warn him, but you asked for their help in solving this puzzle. was it the russians who were wrong or misleading us, trying to get us involved in this problem? >> i think it is still a problem. people generally will share once they determine that something is relevant to a terrorism investigation. and that it's too late.
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you have to share volumes of information and it needs to go to the fbi and it generally does. but there are often confusion confusing parts about. the answer is you don't know if its counterterrorism information until you have it or until you can compare it to other information and find connections between not. i think the pressure needs to be on ensuring that people are showing core information that they collect. even if there's no indication yet that it is relevant for individual investigation. >> you have some comments on this? >> witnesses know far more about this than i do. but it seems that the main challenge is how we look at this process and how do you identify
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people increasing violence. i think the important point is looking at the boston marathon attacks as an aberration. this is probably going to be a next-generation threat. i think that understanding it will be very important. >> thank you. >> chernow recognizes the gentleman from new york. >> thank you, mr. chairman. we have a series of hearings on the boston bombings which is very important to us as we go forward. the bomber in 2009 was sent out on a mission and he was also trained in pakistan. so they are working on this here. i would like to thank the global
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witnesses for their testimony and let me just say with mayor rudy giuliani. when i was listening to the introduction and those days and we are taking the subways in brooklyn and manhattan, congratulations. [laughter] >> i haven't told anyone in brooklyn you. [laughter] >> i try to keep it secret. [laughter] >> if we could focus on what happened here in boston. the boston police had four detectives with top-secret clearance. they were never told about the letter from russia and they knew nothing about it. the commissioner in nothing about it. he went back and found out that
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during those seven years, the police officers had never been given any top-secret information. i notice different in new york ended in nassau county, but i was struck by this. when the younger brother was in the hospital and interrogated, he said that they had been on their way to times square to carry out a bombing and the fbi never told the nypd about it. the fbi's excuse was, well, he was in the hospital. but at that stage no one knew who else was involved. and at the very least they should have contacted them. i think the fbi has a lot to explain here. the fact that they have
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stonewalled us completely since the boston bombings, i think it is upsetting. when you talk about this among all levels of government, the fact that the fbi is not sharing this information is totally unacceptable. we need to insist that the fbi would be much more accountable to us. do you think they can function effectively if top-secret information is not transmitted to them by the fbi. for instance, when the fbi was notified by the russians, they were not allowed to see if they had been radicalized. and the fact is they have gone to the boston police, as i'm sure all of you know, if they
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could've just said when they were thrown out, he was put out of the mosque because of this he was actually ejected for radical behavior. and they don't have people working like this. without that sharing of information between the fbi and the police, we must determine how it worked effectively. >> the whole purpose is so we can share information. sony police officer on this should be cleared for classified information and the perfect opportunity to clean up the problem that i mentioned earlier where the fbi can go back to the earlier error of law enforcement
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and the fbi was probably correct in many cases even share information with some local police departments because they were unprofessional and corrupt and they were going to handle the information correctly. that is largely not true today. but what the fbi should do is make certain that it has the ability to communicate with local police. you have to solve these problems and i think the fbi should do that. the new threat we are facing this in america's communities and neighborhoods and in america's homes. the fbi can't possibly do that. it is not so much the failure to warn, but the failure to ask for help. which in this case, they needed.
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>> if you are on the joint terrorism task force, we have a clearance and perhaps we should ask about this. in this case from the question is what do those police officers, what can they do in working with our home department after the fbi says he is not a threat. just assuming that is a reasonable conclusion. how can the police pick up what the fbi no longer can cover. my understanding is the fbi and law enforcement level, actually engage without mosque in the past on engagement front, which i think is a very important role for the fbi and others as well. that didn't happen here. but we have to continue to encourage them with state and local authorities to engage in the same way that they engaged in the organizations to map the
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fbi never told any police officers about this inquiry. even when the brothers pictures on television all around the world, no one came forward to identify them. i fully agree with what the chairman said. we have worked to get purple hearts for those who are actually casualties and i yield back. >> i think the gentleman for his questioning. >> thank you very much. i want to thank you and the ranking member for your cooperation and commitment to the security of this nation. i am reminded of my friends serving on this committee, those
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of us who are in the united states congress, it is a humble but awesome challenge coming to view the aftermath, as you well know, many members of congress came to ground zero and it was a sober and emotional experience. many of his early enough to see the remnants of recovery. it is a scene that will never be forgotten by those of us who serve, more importantly, the american people as well. in my inquiry of the chairman on the issue of security, the recognition of civil liberties is that i'm always reminded of those words that we would not allow ourselves to be terrorized or deny our citizens their civil liberties and civil rights. i maintain that the dual responsibility of this committee
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and i'm glad to see witnesses acknowledged the importance of that. but i think the mayor and the witnesses for their service, i am glad that the mayor indicated that both president obama and president bush both said that our challenge is to be successful 100% of the time and if that is not the case, we are obviously vulnerable. i'm curious and interested in your line of reasoning about leadership from the top and certainly among other things, the interfacing with leaders, president obama spoke in cairo. it was all under the premise of making nation more secure. and i hope that the mayor is not suggesting that those kinds of outrageous would intimidate our law enforcement officers. because i want to do everything
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that we can to let them know is a member of congress that believes in engagement, i am not suggesting that this is to instruct them not to do, as you have just laid out for us. i'm just trying to clarify. okay. i was saying if it does not relate to the statement that the president makes internationally or his engagement against terrorism or desire to try to work things out with some of these countries. as being more specific because i think it is exceedingly damaging to engage in this section and i know many law enforcement, new york city police officers, fbi agents, other agencies, there is a certain reluctance to describe
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someone as an islamic extremist, for fear that you're going to make a mistake and if you do he be so the consequences will be very happy. i'm not sure that we will ever know that. but it certainly played a role in this case. it was so obvious that this man was a possible terrorist and some of this goes back, to be fair, to before president obama. he was being evaluated in a military also during the bush administration there was a similar kind of reluctance. i think it would be very helpful and healthy if the situation was described correctly. and i think it would move us to have a correct sense that it is
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very difficult. but we want them to protect us from the bombings, not protect us from possibly making a few mistakes about how you classify people. >> thank you mayor, thank you very much. i would raise two questions. my clock is ticking, but i think that is an important clarification, and i would indicate to you that many civilians were impacted at 430. and i am talking about how it is in no way workplace violence after the fact and those officers who were at the supervisors and they should have detected the erratic behavior. i argue that we must connect the dots. and if we have an aftermath of assessing what happens with that nature, then we need to indicate that the dots are not connected at fort hood.
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let me go to the other two witnesses right now. i would like you to expand on this as the mayor has indicated, what we can do to law enforcement to let them know that connecting the dots is not going to drive an attack on their determination on individuals that suggest that they are self radicalized or that they are terrorists. you talk about that with how we spend our money, and if i could question as to indicate this, what are we doing right or wrong with a review of our own self appointed in the united states, where we missing the vote on that. >> thank you. i do want to make one note, which is the day after the attacks in the worldwide
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incident terrorist database, i am not disagreeing. i think some of this was part of political correctness. >> to the question of how we are improving the ability to detect things, we have spent a lot of money on state and local centers. we saw that in fort hood. we had agents and officers looking at the behavior and did not recognize radicalization in the same way as that other people would. we have to improve that kind of training. that applies not just to this, but to the fbi officers themselves and we have to give them good training so they are not afraid were forced to be
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politically correct. second, we have to bring them closer together. we have largely created them. they play two roles, first is they take the pieces that the fbi cannot investigate or need help on and put that out of the state and local communities for all of the investigation. they take the pieces that are coming out from the state and local officials and say, that is a little funny, then they coordinate and investigate that information that is bubbling out. in my experience, state and local are not doing enough of that. they are waiting for a big event, they need to be more involved in the investigative work to allocate their resources. >> i think you're quite correct
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to point out that certainly counterterrorism capabilities have evolved in recent years. there is a counter radicalization that goes back in 2008 and 2009, many of them are actually radicalized and recruited. two distinguished witnesses have talked about tightening up the local law enforcement and how it is critical. you find these individuals navigating between jurisdictions. they can be located from new york city, new york, colorado, then back to new york, in the case of this individual, he lived in suburban connecticut.
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that is one dimension. i think the other one, i think that what has always eluded me as who is responsible for counter radicalization in the united states today. we are talking about a phenomenon that time has not yet been committed. certainly this is high-level and a priority. it then beyond those two coordinating functions and policy functions, who in the federal government is responsible for this. is it the department of homeland security? this is why i think it is so important to work with local police forces.
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but i think there has to be some direction of a federal agency that takes hold of this. >> the time for the gentleman has expired. the science and technology committee markup will be factually. >> thank you. we yelled back. >> thank you. the gentlelady was always extremely eloquent. >> i appreciate your service very much. especially in a country and especially to the mayor. i didn't know you had 9/11 we were in detroit while you were
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in new york. but there we were that day, what happened that day and afterwards. america's mayor, you have the greatest ohio. you are more than the president or governor, more than the fbi director or the cia or department of defense, everyone was looking to you for the path forward, and i guess my question, mr. mayor, is how does the american people perceive the war on terror and how we prosecute the enemy combatant as well. is obviously we face a new type of enemy. everyone has a colored uniform on, we were able to identify
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with the enemy is. and he spoke about identifying this and how important it is for us. but now we talk about this asymmetrically as well. they saw that as the battlefield. over the skies of detroit in 2009, that enemy combatant, in my mind, what happened then was, and we learned some lessons from now, as we always do. we actually went to the gateway rather than being held out on the tarmac. but then they arrest him and
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take him to the university of michigan burn center where he received the very best treatment known to mankind. immediately blurt out. so i'm certain that we lost all kinds of valuable information at that time and with that particular terrorist. then he was tried in detroit at a huge expense to taxpayers and an enormous amount of security. my question, which i talked about that day, this guy is an enemy combatant and should not be treated and is not a law enforcement situation going on. my question is really how do you think we should be treating these individuals. he is serving a life term, that is fine. but what about all of the information that we lost by not turning him over to a military tribunal or what have you. i'm questioning this is how this
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administration and department of justice proceeding, whether that is the right path forward in an effort. >> that is a very good point. the reality is that we keep referring to these individuals as isolated acts, single individuals, which is true. but they are also connected. it is not as if these are completely independent of each other. they are connected by the same motivation. exactly the same causative factors and they are driven by the same ideology. if you recognize that, and makes it easier to catch them and makes it easier to find the clues and the things that lead
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to they are and why they are doing what they are doing. i certainly, in both cases, the detroit case in the boston case, if it were my decision, i would have talked about this more. particularly with boston, we have more than enough evidence to convict. if you needed more evidence than not, never would've hired you as an assistant u.s. attorney. he needed more evidence by the time they caught him. well, then you shouldn't prosecute the case. there was no reason. we didn't need his statement is a properly admitted confession. but what we needed was information for him, so i think it would've been a much wiser thing to declare an an enemy combatant when he got better
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question. getting every bit of information out of him. the same is true in detroit and we should recognize about the detroit situation that seems to me that we only prevented by luck and that no one should be taking credit for what a great job we did at preventing this. we cannot count on that. i always have found in my life that i learn a lot more when i was in fail and when i succeed. and therefore you shouldn't feel any kind of guilt in examining the situations where we failed. with excruciating analysis. that's the only way we will prevent these in the future. the goal is a very difficult one here. to protect lives, we must be right 100% of the time. maybe we can reach that standard. but the more than office that you do with these incidents
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after we haven't happened, the more we can learn to fix it in the future. why would we ever deprive ourselves of information, i cannot figure out. there was no tactical reason to give either one of these people miranda warnings were be able to prosecute and convict. he certainly have more than enough basis to describe them as part of an international conspiracy against us. one they voluntarily joined on their own when they decided to undertake these acts. many of them announced to us their motivation, where we are not talking about the bombing in london. but that bomber went on television to tell us in case we didn't get it right, that he was doing this in the name of allah. so we get an idea that he'd join
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this conspiracy. so you certainly have enough basis to describe him as an enemy combatant. we have not evidence to convict, used should subject them to long periods of questioning in the future. then you can move on and prosecute them in a military court or prosecute them there. >> thank you very much. my time has expired. thank you. >> the gentleman yield back. the gentleman from massachusetts >> thank you, mr. chairman. as mentioned, there is a judicial proceeding going on today and there is another judicial proceeding going on with the trial of james whitey bulger of what happened when information is not shared among
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law enforcement officers. and how they can butt heads and actually hurt the effort. that is why this committee, that is what my responsibility is as well. to an oversight function. to find out what went wrong so that we can save future lives. and i believe that we can. my involvement has taken me to russia. i met met with the director of counterterrorism and while i was in russia, the first questioning as to why they didn't respond, the fbi requests the information
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and many said they didn't know anything about the request. they never heard anything about it. and they said given the names of the people and give me the data when i was sent. so there is a gap. in my questioning, then i asked and they said it was march 4, 2011. and i ask them about this and i asked if they could get this. i wasn't sure, quite frankly. this committee has requested that and still doesn't have a copy of that. but then they read the document
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of march 4, 2011. and it was amazing in its detail. that is what prompted the interview by the terrorism task force shortly thereafter. so that is part of the case closed. one month later, they were in russia. our office was needy with a known terrorist. some minority on their way had they known this.
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yet there was another jabber that could've been closed. and he came back to the united states. the person he met with was reportedly killed. the other person was reportedly killed. there is an fbi background check that went into that, that is my understanding. so they went ahead proceed with his citizenship. now, why, if they were part of it is, why were they not picked up. we said despite this, how could they pass the background check.
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dhs said yes, they communicated that to the fbi, but the case was closed. because something is wrong. the answer is that it wouldn't have mattered anyway because the case is closed. so we have to find a way and i am suggesting. we need to find a way to get through this bureaucracy were the case closed is everywhere. it became an excuse as to why other things were not done. what can we do about this. our obligation is oversight and to look at the process and there were obviously things wrong. if you could help us if you
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could with the expertise. if you stop everything from happening. >> i think your observation is exactly right. let's assume again that the fbi did everything right that there was nothing suspicious. the life still goes on. so we have to have a system for state and locals and homeland security getting added into that case so people go back and talk about it. if that is not happening, and in some cases it is not come about that. i'm going to turn it around a little bit. which is that you have to tell the state locals how long should we keep back going back and talk
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to these people. so let's put it in this way, somebody get this here and the fbi interviews him and says, are you kidding me. i am not violent, it is like shooting guns. and they close the case. how long should the fbi go back and look at that case and how long should they wonder about that person and in some way or another keep them under suspicion? well,. >> how common is it in a country like russia to get that specific? to give that this is the kind of information. part of that is a reference to the fact that we might have to change his name slightly. his name is not common.
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but i have great sympathy for an organization when they go back to an intelligence organization and did stiff arm three times in a row. i don't know if that is the case, that is my point. >> i think it is relatively common. whether this case one other case, there will be cases that the fbi closes. had we spread that responsibility and share that with state and local is so others can keep an eye on it and for how long. right now the fusion centers are not doing a great job of picking that up because we have not had them do that. it is difficult for that information to be shared. so that they can decide that this is worth my time and energy even if it is not part of the fbi. we don't want them making that decision. we want them making the decision
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because they know they would like to guard against that or robberies or anything else. so you have to make sure that information is shared with oversight and then put that burden on the state and local to do what they want and make sure that that information is being refreshed. >> something should've come up internally. we are talking about something that would've red flag them. i do not think there are any clear answers, but that is going to be part of this here. but we are talking about information sharing and the members of congress as well. we are not getting that information to conduct proper oversight. i'm glad to hear them say we're
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not we are not going to stop until we get it and we yield back. >> we are talking about this and what would be interesting and i think they're talking about this, not other places. >> the fbi has to provide the information so they can do this and report to state and local authorities as well. >> thank you. so i think that we heard repeatedly in boston, that the case was closed. with that, i recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you to the distinguished panel. i'd like to follow up with my good friends inquiries. it goes to this degree to which
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there is an ability to pursue investigations and at what point in time do you discontinue an investigation. it has been a while since you blew off your old attorneys manual. >> i don't think they had manuals in my day. [laughter] >> that is a part of the issue. and though the work very closely in your prior capacity, we had senator lieberman who spent a great deal of time looking at these issues as well. in the aftermath of boston was the attorney general's guidelines, which may allow even the agents themselves to ask questions to a certain point. it would never happen in murder
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investigations, those are the days when we used to look traditionally at crimes were committed and we asked questions until we have a resolution. and now the dynamic has changed. we are being asked to investigate matters for a crime commits. so there is some tension about how deeply you go. do we need to revisit guidelines and do we need to be more aggressive at pursuing the these and where is the right place for us to keep cases in some kind of status in which new information, you touched on it, the information that allows us to reopen the inquiry. >> i think you have nailed it. i think this exactly where the mayor is right. political correctness becomes an issue. congress passes a law.
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maybe it is the privacy act, whatever it might be. then the attorney general has guidelines and then you have the fbi working on their intelligence guidelines. and he wanted to let them do this and suddenly they are doing a lot less internally. setting the war in general they have a place to sure that the attorney general guidelines and internal regulations about what they can do a really consistent and not being risk-averse and asking those questions. these sorts of investigations are different. they're different because there hasn't been crimea. they are also different because the implicate the first amendment. especially in a way that a normal bank robbery doesn't. so to risk. you you have to make sure you have good alignment between how
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people are operating in the federal government. so it is consistent with the maximum authority gave them under the law. it is after they do that, you need to give them top cover. i have sat in his chair when i was an official in the u.s. government. and i was getting yelled at by people about how dare you watch what my constituents, they never did anything and every time they were stopped at the airport, three months later after the christmas day bombing, the very same people, not suggesting members of this committee, were saying how dare you, why aren't there more people. everyone should be on the no-fly list. so you have to make sure that the executive branch is honoring that to it's fullest and be honest after the fact that people are doing really hard
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jobs with your blessing as long as they are explicit with what you are allowing them to do. >> those are members of the prior congress we were talking about. the nsa issue is a perfect example of how has a tremendously chilling effect on the ability of us to pursue where we need to go in the nation in terms of protecting the homeland. maybe it is an appropriate time to be asking those questions as well. but are there any thoughts? >> i think the reality is that these are just natural concerns that people were doing high-risk investigations had. the atmosphere needed to create that means that they are going to go further or back off. if they think that they are going to be criticizing if they
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make a mistake, they will back off quickly. they may be supportive if they make a mistake. then they are going to go further. but there is a second issue i was listening to the gentleman's question that also comes up. i don't know that this is just a matter of political correctness. i also think it is a matter of resource. the fbi come as i pointed out earlier is only 13,000 agents, that is a very small law enforcement agency. york city police burma, 35,000 police officers. 800,000 police officers nationwide in a 12,000 person organization. you have to have some degree of discipline about what you can investigate. you can't investigate everything. you don't have good resources all the time to do it. second the suggestion, that one
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of your recommendations should be that if the fbi doesn't want to pursue it, and if they can be honest about it because they just don't have the resources to do it, which they don't, then they should turn it over the philadelphia phillies for the boston police or the new york police to further investigate this. and then they can make the decision with a larger resource pool of available. is this something worth pursuing or isn't. at least we know enough about it that you would have more resources, particularly i find him going back to russia is a startling event, seeking asylum in the united states, i felt like thousands of asylum cases where those attorney general.
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you get asylum in the united states if he proved that there is a valid fear of persecution if you go back to your homeland. so he proved to our satisfaction, his family did, that he would be persecuted if he went back to russia. all of a sudden he gets up and goes back to russia after the russians told us he was a suspected terrorist. something strange is going on here, but this guy is going back to the country from which he was persecuted, it would seem to me the put him back on the list. so there was plenty here that the fbi has come to the conclusion that we have been the best that we can. we don't have the resources to go any further and you have this very large local law enforcement agency that gives them a chance to go forward and something should be built in with whatever
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protocol exists. and if they have to straighten out the local law enforcement agency and get them to be more responsible, they want to raise that issue and get it straightened out. >> that is one of the concepts that was behind the creation, just that principle that they would be those who pursue that and the fact that it isn't happening appropriately, it's another weakness that we need to have. thank you, i yield back. >> we now recognize the gentleman from texas. >> thank you, mr. chairman. chairman duncan had a committee hearing about the influence of iran in the western hemisphere. understanding that terrorists
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can come to this country on many ports of entry. i'm curious on the thoughts of what we can do in terms of a relationship with canada and mexico coming into this country. >> we have had a couple of examples already. sponsor terrorism with both of the countries, and then we have an al qaeda inspired plot in canada, which involves al qaeda leadership in iran. we note those are very interesting. if you have iranians coming through that border, they tend to stand out. on the northern border, obviously there is lots of mass
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and volume, but it's a very diverse population coming from the northern border that can be part of this. while insuring the dhs from the fbi, the cia are sharing information about travelers so that we can hopefully detected. it also there's one other point, which is a matter of the past 12 years, iranian sponsored terrorism and they have not gone the same focus as others in the u.s. appropriately so. but if you're going to free the fbi or sue iranian terrorism, which is a growing threat in the country, then you have to have them shed some other mission than one of the other ways to do that goes back to what the mayor was saying, but state and locals are being fully leveraged. so iran is a real threat on both corners. we have seen over the past two years for the fbi has to have the resources to pursue that.
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you can do that by leveraging state and locals with these lower-level threats like what eventually became the boston bombings. >> you view the degree of risk is equal? >> i view it as different. it is a real threat that iran, especially if there were a conflict between nuclear facilities, there is a real threat of iran using hezbollah to attack the u.s. hezbollah operatives were in the u.s. today and we have seen the attacks here in the u.s. and the borders of vulnerabilities. again, if there is some extent, we will become increasingly vulnerable.
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>> congressman, i would not diminish the possibility of either of those. iran and hezbollah are sophisticated enough to get operatives in this country through any of the three enable use any vulnerability to get this going. >> my next question was in terms of relationships with both countries, what more can we do to avoid those threats. >> cumbersome, i wish there was a greater expert with mexico and canada on us. i know that there is incredible pressure to keep both of these borders open for very good economic reasons. and at the same time, having worked more, i think the canadians are very focused on this issue. on the mexico border and the southwest border and frankly i
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think that there are bigger issues from the government of mexico than iran. and that is the general insecurities. so i think we are continuing this and it would be very critical. >> you mentioned with respect to "the new york times" bombings that due to the type of fertilizer that that particular bomber had used, because there were mechanisms in place that were able to do text other and more more dangerous versions, what information do we have about the materials that we have used in the boston bombings in that regard, and if you have that information, can you elaborate on why we were maybe not able to identify those materials? >> we learn from the obama state bombing that nitrogen fertilizer
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is an incredibly effective explosive device. after that event, the fbi started controlling him. so if you go out and buy nitrogen-based fertilizer come the next day and age it is going to knock on her door and say why are you buying this. that is why he can buy the right fertilizer. in the case of boston, the enemy is that smarter. the enemy that smarter because they were training and they bought things that really cannot be controlled very well. you cannot control this purchase of firecrackers for the purchase of small bbs and things like that. regrettably, i think that when
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you're part of this ideological group, you learn from each other's mistakes and you get smarter about it. and they were smart about it. the good news is that they could not build bombs that were nearly as big and powerful as they seemed in the past. it was not catastrophic like we might have otherwise had. >> thank you. >> the chair recognizes the gentleman from south carolina. >> mr. chairman, thank you so much. i want to thank the gentleman from texas are following up on yesterday's hearing about the iranian threat. would like to thank the director for his comments and recognizing that there is a threat and all of them are trying to operate in this hemisphere. and the comments contradict the
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state department when they say that the iranian threat is winning in this hemisphere. i think that is taking a very narrow view and that is sort of like focusing on the road you were plowing and not the field. so we are not going to slow down on recognizing were raising awareness from america. i want to just take a moment and thank the mayor continuing to talk about political correctness director, you may disagree with some of that. but let me just say that i have talked for the last three years about the disappearing language of terror, and the fact that the 9/11 commission report used words that really identify the real threat. whether it is jihad, al qaeda, muslim brotherhood, were terrorist organizations
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themselves, these are identifiers. this is some of the law enforcement agencies as we have seen over the last for five years, this concerns me. because i do believe that you have to be able to identify the enemy and talk openly. when i hear this, the dod and the pentagon discourages the use of certain identifying words within our military apparatus. they discourage those officers were talking about those threats. then you do have a forehead type of situation where maybe those who saw something happening were fearful of identifying the jihadist high-threat because they were fearful about future promotions or assignments and understand how the military works there. so i don't think we need to back away from being able to talk
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about the threats that we face. i appreciate the freshness that we are seeing today and from the mayor. so just segueing in, and let me just say that hours and days and weeks after the september 11 attacks, the trustworthy leadership became part of our nation's resolve and i have reason to believe in the competence of our government's ability to respond to acts of terror and it came about from your leadership. i thank you for that. i was in south carolina and i was watching it from afar. and i was inspired. i was inspired to the point to get back involved in public service. but let me expand on that. i was in the navy fighting the war on terror in a 50 caliber
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bowed, as far away as you can think, as far away from afghanistan as you can envision. then he set my best friend and i went down on september 12. >> we joined because we never wanted to see that happen again. he was inspired from your leadership, i believe, as well. so when we talk about political correctness and your leadership, and you help unshed helped to start the ball rolling, asking those individuals to be cognizant, when we talk about the dhs and the communications with america, they seem antagonistic. it seems to me on a host of
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issues that the department communicates the mission to the american people. mayor, how would you recommend that we better engage the american people rather than continuing that antagonism. this is part of the answer, to involve the american people. >> thank you, mr. duncan. we want an alert and a group of citizens who are reporting to us information that they see that is suspicious. one police officers who have been trained on the precursors of terrorism and i recommend to an article written by commissioner bratton in which he describes the training of los angeles police department to look for the warning signs of a
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terrorist act. if you want a citizenry that is a work of art, one that is sensitive to that, at the same time we don't want to trample on people's elbow liberties. because of you have a sensory that is very alert to that and one that is very sensitive to it, they can occasionally make mistakes. they could see something suspicious that turns out to be innocent activities. that's a very difficult balance to strike. but we have to attempt to do it. we now have to attempt to do it if we have finally recognized that we face the threat of self inspired terrorism. because the only signs of them are probably going to be these things that we see within the community. being honest about what we face
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will make the citizenry were willing to come forward and make that police department more willing to take a risk and if we engage in the theory that there is no war, that is absurd. i mean, they believe that there is a war against us, it's a matter of whether we recognize it or not. it is absurd to say that there isn't a connection between the same spirit within a couple of weeks of each other, there was a connection between boston and london. the bombers were inspired by a jihad as an. the guy in london went on to say he was asked by inspired by the same thing that i don't think we are insulting anyone or offending anyone or just
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recognize reality. but we don't do that, we are going to lose a lot of these things. before september 11, i saw my city saved by an alert police department that was not afraid to come forward. it was an incident occurred about two years before september 11. a young new york city police officer, i think a rookie police officer and he noticed two men that looked middle eastern. suspiciously looking at a train station. i don't exactly remember what the suspicionless, but they looked suspicious. he went to his sergeant at the desk and he said, you know, i saw this, these two middle eastern looking guys and they looked suspicious. the surgeon could've said oh, forget it, kid. get lost and so forth. and he said, i will check.
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so he called and checked, this was about 10:00 o'clock at night, about 5:00 o'clock in the morning they broke into a row house in brooklyn and shot this man just before he was set to blow up the building. we we won't rookie police officers and it can't can happen every time, but this is what we need to prevent these kinds of things from happening. pity we have to air on the side of caution, telling her not to be afraid to act with their instincts. but the question is making sure
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that we never make a mistake. would we want to make sure that we don't have any future boston bombings. and that is aitical choice not in a partisan sense, but in a legal sense, that is a choice that has to be made as to which we want to do. i think that is something that is a little bit confusing right now. >> god bless you guys. i believe, mr. chairman, if we are honest with the american people and have a view about this, we can afford. >> thank you. >> which are now recognizes the gentleman from florida, mr. richman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i will pick up where the mayor left off. that is talking about giving our
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law enforcement officers the reassurance that we will support our law enforcement officers to use their judgment and trust their instincts. in your opinion, what do we need to do to send them the message that you think would reassure them and give them the confidence to take that chance. >> i think the fbi engaging in more would be helpful. maybe this is one of the initiatives that could take place. for the fbi to really think in terms of a potential 800,000 enforcement agents are available to us.
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it probably can be all of them. but maybe the fbi should undertake to train them as to how they should conduct themselves in trying to strike a balance between how hard we go and when do we violate someone's civil liberties. that would be a valid thing for them to do. here's the thing that breaks down these institutional barriers, which i saw in the the federal government and ice on the new york city government. some of our agencies don't exactly get along all the time. the more these people get to know each other and it becomes a personal relationship, the better it works. the first joint terrorism task force was set up in new york city in the late 1970s between an fbi director named ken walton and the new york city police officer named maguire. they were good friends.
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they were facing bombings that included a cuban terrorist group and others. they were facing all these bombings and they decided that they were going to join a joint terrorism task force, so they would sit down and investigate cases together. so most of the cops probably thought it was a terrible mistake, you can't work with the fbi, they thought they'd be compromised forever working with the new york city police department. but because these two guys got along with each other, this information flows a lot better. >> that goes right into my next question. do we leave this voluntarily up to the fbi or do we set some
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sort of protocols were rules when a trigger is reached that there is mandatory disclosure or information sharing. >> congressman, i tend to think, and i am an executive branch guy, like a little bit of flexibility in the executive branch, because i don't think that our congress wants congress wants to be in the position of figuring out when something should be shared. but you can also set the tone for this. i've worked with this committee a lot. it would be great to have a joint hearing between this committee and the house judiciary committee and invite the fbi and dhs to sit next to each other. that is a statement that we will work together with, we will work
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with the justice and homeland security in a way that forces you to work together. we will only fund him if they were part of joint forces. that is a message that you operate in a joint when we will set the standards. and i think that there is, you provide reporting requirements. so tell us what percentage of those are provided to state and local fusion centers and state and local police departments. and then you can make that judgment if it is 5% or 95%, you can have that conversation. but i think that is it better methodology than saying you share under these circumstances but not others. >> another we have had a lot of talk about political correctness part of the conversation is also
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political courage. we have talked about the 9/11 commission report. but i still think that we are far too patient has a committee and not claiming our rights so that the department of homeland security is not spread out all over the place and answering to 108 subcommittees of last couple of years. it is one of the suggestions that has not been implemented. i think that is one thing this committee could do in a bipartisan manner to make sure that we bring enough attention to the fact that we still do not have the jurisdiction that we should have, no matter if it is the chairman or former chairman thompson.
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the more that these things happen, it highlights the fact that we have the ability to do it, but we just don't have the jurisdiction so that we can get where we need to be as a committee. with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman. that is a work in progress. director, your recommendation is one that i have already been discussing with the chairman of the judiciary committee to hold a joint hearing on. so that i recognize the gentleman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me just say that i have a special admiration. >> you know, i believe that the first priority in any type of immigration law, one that protects the american people, that is first and foremost in my mind. what we should do is at the
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forefront of what we are debating here today. when we talk about border security, sometimes what is left out is nearly over 40% of those in the country come legally and we simply can't find them. i look at any stage, i believe you are there for the border state. when we look at some of the attacks, whether it is a christmas day bomber or going back to country and being able to get back in the united states who got back here on a student visa, when in reality he was a
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taxi cab driver and involved in 1993 attack on the world trade center. whether it be two of the pilots on 9/11 who have their student visas approved, i think it's obvious that we are digging holes in our visa system here. my question is with that, you feel would be the best interest of the american people that we fixed that problem first, since we know it is a national security threat and would solve half of our problems as well as making them realize that what happens when someone gets by. i would like your opinion. >> there is no question that immigration system has to be fixed. we have just passed massive
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resources for border patrol. slow to keep the south and southern border of the united states is not a and impossible task as people make it out to be. look at the size of the border. how they reorganize the police department for organizing crime and it sounds like a strange statement but it is easier to control the southern border they reduce crime in new york city by 50 or 60% in the scale is the same. 77 precincts you would be 50 border patrol stations. we have 40,000 police officers but you only need 20 or 30,000 border patrol to do a. if we did it we would end up
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with the much better system if we have more control who was coming in illegally then we could expand the number of people coming in illegally. we could make it easier to. to help reduce chris the terrorism. >> i think simply but that is like a few still have a hole in your roof? >> yes. this committee did pass the results act unanimously which is almost unheard of in today's environment. so the chair now recognizes the gentleman from california. welcome to our other witnesses. i really appreciate your
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leadership. and you really led the city. in to talk about over deliver if they thank you would agree even the congress ended up those seeing god bless america. and buick knowledge president bush's role and the role he played. but since he took office he has increased the number of drums that the bush and mr. shen was conducting.
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and it is more than president bush? >> there are some things that i strongly disagree with and i particularly believe the drone program was effective program. i don't know the program in great detail. lot of it is classified in it and other choices made who is targeted for attack and who isn't but in general is a good thing? i do. it is necessary. >> but it has escalated. >> i don't want to get contagious that there was a tremendous concern to
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capture a terrorist and subject them to the three or four that were water boarded and now of course, we have killed many more. the one hesitation is to be deprived ourselves of the ability to get information before we engage to capture them and question them? i am not an expert i don't know the right you answer that is a legitimate question to ask. >> with the data collection that escalated since president bush was in office and since we identify for nationals even he has stepped up the efforts in
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contiguous the programs president bush started. >> end he participated from osama been lauded? >> i told him personally had active leadership to do that >> i think you'd agree obama has continued the efforts with the war on tear it has been more susceptible. >> in some ways he has been more successful he has been less successful to capture people to get information from them my major objection to obama is it changes his unwillingness to describe it as it were on tear. it sends the wrong signals to our bureaucracy and enemies they perceive that as a sign of weakness and irrationalities he would not
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explain it as a war with the terrorist and they would not describe that with us. >> within plane crash in seven cisco we would respond before traditional media and we saw the boston bombing the fbi was collecting them information to engage in a new audience to learn more about the investigation. what roles using social media would have played had it been around on september 11? what role do you see it playing to go forward? >> it has expanded exponentially so that is a hypothetical question. if a september 11 was planned today, the chance to
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pick it up through social media and other forms of communication which we now have more surveillance of is much greater there is not henderson a chance you will pick it up but i forgot he made that statement hell long we have gone without the massive attack on september 11 when of the reasons is it would be hard to do to accomplish that with the things that are in place today to give a much greater chance to pick up a massive attack however on either hand that leaves us a vulnerable to the smaller tax that take place under the radar that we have set up. so we are safer against one but more vulnerable to another.
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although the numbers are different a larger attack more people die but it is destabilizing to a country that values every human life. that does make a difference. but it is very destabilizing particularly if you have numerous acts like this even the chance that we stop our disabling for the. >> thank you for holding this in thank you for being here today. you received great praise as you should have. hope you're not offended we have not called user of you has been knighted. [laughter]
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>> i tried to hide the fact. >> that would be in my home town as well. i would like to follow-up that the severe irony that the policies of president bush had in place that the campaign so aggressively against that perhaps president bush may be had more than a few things right in history will prove the case. to use the words common thread and political correctness and at 1.mr. guiliani you said that but to talk about those ideas is the bigger picture specifically the motivation for the actions what
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motivates? has been said maybe the u.s. has been blamed for the actions against us but perhaps we were not so colonial or exploited the developing nations are have u.s. personnel in certain parts of the world, i guess with the idea of american exceptionally some with american relativism. i think that is absurd and that is a topic for another day but as abraham lincoln says the last best hope of man. not just true for americans with those of the world. but my question is this. is there anything that we can do that will eliminate or lessen the motivation to bring us harm?
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but the reality is as long as the fundamentalism exist they will always seek to destroy us. >> i have no doubt to the answer of your question. from september levin trying to figure out why would they do what they did? fit the reality is what we do is only on the margins of what they do to us. of their motivation even though it can be described as a rational or in an insane but it is a perception of their religion. is incorrect? but with a major message of the muslim religion but the
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only way we could stop them is to stop being a democracy. stop respecting the rights of women and subjugated to where they believe in society. and to except their belief about god and the way the system operates. but he essentially we have to change our values to fit there values to not kill us. it is not about israel and palestine. that is not that issue or the occupation -- occupation of anyplace is not about muslim millions so the dispute with communism over the economic system or the
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social system it emanates from their. for what the religion is demanding of them. they may get to that because of psychological problems they have but then they are joined with the same motivation. so and abroad since we stopped that? we can't on a smaller level we can try to engage with moderate, a sensible, and mainstream members of which there are many. we can encourage them more to step out. with a totally unrelated story how i think about this, when i was the united states attorney i started to pursue the mafia. after reading my first case i was criticized for using the word mafia. not only was i criticized it
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was amended i am removed from office because it violated the guidelines you could not use the word mafia. that was put in at the behest of the anti-american civil rights supporters league who was the head of the colombo crime bill the. it was insulting to i ty americans. and i said i would continue to use the word mafia because it should only be insulting to those who are members of the mafia or those who sympathize with the mafia but for those who go as a group of murdering imbeciles which is what they were coming then they should be liberated and point out that this group called the mafia that most italian
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americans don't like them and want to see them going to be healthy if that is the dialogue we had that most muslims should be opposed and co-star but to speak out and get on the same page but nobody should be defensive about describing something as islamic terrorism that you are insulting decent members of their religion produce a islamic extremist terrorism you are insulting exactly he want to insult the islamic extremists in those sympathizer's anyone else who was nervous about that should get over it. >> i appreciate your answer. i wish we had more time. maybe we would follow up individually with you. >> just very quickly come i take it is a critical question. al qaeda is narrative is pretty simple. us versus them us is the
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west, u.s. israel and all of the muslim world we do everything we can to show that narrative is false. but it is the vast majority of muslims and then is the tiny proportion of the violent extremists around the world who are actually terrorist. we will not change their minds we have to kill and capture but what we can do is help the insurer the rest of the space muslim world realizes we are the percentage. >> again and the key for that response. the fica just conclude with this it is a small percentage but the islamic fundamentalist it is a
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long-haul but short of something developed over hundreds of years which we clearly will not do then this will be a conflict that will exist for the long haul and we need to prepare ourselves and the people for that. with that mr. chairman, thank you. >> the chair recognizes the gentlelady from new york. >> thank-you making member. mayor guiliani anything we have not given brooklyn the fact it is far more cosmopolitan and being getting credit for the proceedings and the rest of our witnesses it is good to have you here as well. mr. guiliani, and tear guiliani my mother served as
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a council member. is good to have you here. it gives us a sobering look with what we are challenged with and what we find is having been in the your call my life that we get caught up in the hindsight of 2020 type of philosophy that the art has become the way it has become because we're the number one terrorist target. it's none of us could have imagined the world trade center would be bombed from that we decided we will put to protect the miss it --
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municipal building but we never thought people would fly from above. but now we know we have to reorient yourselves in shares of security, intelligence and things of that nature. it is an ongoing battle that we have to think outside the box to use the type of information sharing to try to avert things. but in those of our finite. what role does it teach us play in the intelligence community? if we cannot in answer that question then our mission of the agency with a focus of a
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flight to get your responses how do we minimize this as the agency to get that done the? civic that is an excellent question. the dhs intelligence has struggled. in my view has four principal things it has to do really well and all the rest they should stop doing entirely. a number one, the only organization that focuses in a and out of the borders. they do that perfectly or as near as they can but with this abt customs enforcement and customs border protection. number two, a critical
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infrastructure the only intelligence organization focusing on critical infrastructure in the united states so it better do that as well as anyone can understanding where it is what the defense is hour and the vulnerabilities. number three we talk about this a lot coming in to help those centers serve that collection management, a burden sharing, a follow-up investigation that we talk so much about and in my view it has not done a good job of that or to get general information out or to educate the workforce but there is a more granular operational level. fourth and final, it has to be a true fusion center to leverage all intelligence from the customs and border protection, said tsa, a secret service, it has to be
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that. if it can do those four things really well, then everything else can be forgotten and in my view i hope the next under-secretary focuses on that and building a work force to do that it will still we a tough challenge. >> any of you? >> it is the perfect analysis which in the scheme of things with the new agency you are as effective and as strong a leader as your mother was we will be well served. she was a great woman selecting q. i yield back. >> we will thank the lady for that question it sets up the good record 48 chess but
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now the chair recognizes the patient may be from indiana. >> thank you so very much to all of you for coming to share and that is what i want to talk about. there may be a lack of training we may have had fbi agents which causes me great concern because after 9/11 v.expensive training. certainly communities like new york, a loss in angeles, chicago knew about terrorism but a central indiana probably did not know a lot from 11 but been for years led by the federal government we work to trade the local law-enforcement a
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and communities about prevention in detection and i am concerned reid very much have gotten away from that and i am curious whether or not professionals or other experts to study this with their the conference's or those who were in the centers of local law enforcement maybe that is lacking is we have moved away from 9/11. ideas held here yesterday with the emergency prepared this communication committee about the use of social media in disaster preparedness in response but we need to educate more importantly what the terrorist organization is looking like.
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>> we are undoubtedly an a much better place. the average police chief throughout the country in the average age it knows wintertimes more and what this to the extremism is. at it is undoubtedly better. first, is a never ending process. you have a new generation of officers and agents and with declining resources what is the first thing is you will cut? crime, and it happens every day are maybe terrorism. i will stop sending my people to conferences and give them less trading with declining resources we have to keep doing this. but i do think where political correctness can have a very bad influence
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the in part it was done by contractors who didn't know what they we're doing. the f.b.i. anth us have to rely on the expertise to expand over the past 70 years there people who understand this to do it in a way they are not scared about ticino the truce because that is a surefire way to miss the forest for the trees. >> this goes back to mayor giuliani's point with the perception we don't have a war on terrorism anymore with fiscal resources that is the perfect storm. i think there is far fewer of these opportunities with the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
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especially the threat it is changing and evolving. but the threat still exists. second, one of the problems is outside the federal government is a cottage industry for those with questionable views those who have an appropriate instruction and have no qualification gave that treating a bad name we can qualify people but just in the past year i was part of the federal agency we have done this every year since 2002 this the first year done by the u.s. military academy in the first period was discontented with the justification even though it got the highest rating that
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it is no longer a priority. >> i will just add to and what i found defective to convince state and local law enforcement to devote more attention is the assumption that with limited resources resources, if you trade in for terrorism you take away from their ability of the other clients but the fact is a police department that has been trained to detect terrorism after all you're teaching them how to patrol effectively. and that is what you want the police force to do. it is not as if they are wasted. if you trade them to detect errors and they will do a
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better job to detect murderers and rapists they will be better law enforcement officers. behalf to get mayors, police commissioners to stop thinking of this as the zero sum game than i am not doing that. the same thing is true for the department of hamas security convincing state governments to be prepared for the emergency response after the emergency attack. the chance of being subject to a state attack is very small. and makes them better able to deal with a tornado with the emergency responses we have seen to the natural disasters for places that were prepared for terrorism.
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