more economic plan. if you want a more economic i can federalism, you introduce financial and energy policies that will see to that. if you want to have a security force that is capable of doing what general barbero said, let's have commanding control which is the no the case now. >> dr. pollack, do you have anything to add? >> i think the united states needs to do a mothlot more to make clear what we would do to help them if they actually took the steps that we are looking for. right now, my sense from iraqis is we're demanding a great deal from them but we're not actually letting them know what we would do for them if we took what are actually very difficult steps. that gets to ambassador jeffrey's point about how we need to be pressuring them and pushing this process forward. getting rid of prime minister

maliki is going to be very difficult and i think the iraqis need to understand in much more concrete terms rather than the more vague promises that they seem to be hearing from the administration about what they would get if they did it. >> chairman bchl arbero i am really hesitant to continue to authorize sales or to approve sales -- it's the administration to authorize them -- but to approve sales when i see what has happened so far with very critical arm ma meant that has fallen into the hands of isis as a result of it being abandoned on the battlefield. so how -- in light of your comments that we need to respond to iraqi's request for help, which i assume in part is possibly air strikes but also they are looking for equipment how do we create the safeguards so that if we're going to help we don't end up having our weaponry fall in the hands of

isis and use the forces that we want to defeat them? >> it's it will just happen. >> but not to the tune -- >> no i agree. i think from this assessment we look at which are the good units of the iraqi security forces and we invest heavily in them with advice, training whatever they need. and then take a hard look at what they are asked for and what we are willing to share with them and make some decisions. but a senior iraqi leader last week said to me, where is america? russians are supporting us. we want americans, you're our friends.

they have three fixed wing aircraft to shoot hell fires. you can't, as i said, air strike your way out of this. i would pick the right units from this assessment and i would invest in them with the weapons and equipment that we feel -- that would help. >> well, i would say to the iraqis billions of dollars, hundreds of lives, that's where america has been. and and i would also remind you that they were unwilling to pursue a status of forces agreement which might have created the wherewithal to continue to solidify the iraqi security forces. and so i think they have to think about the decisions that they have made not to relive them but to instruct them moving

forward. senator corker? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and again thank you for being here. i think a lot of times our second panels are actually better than the first. but by that time people have other business. thank you so much for your help. dr. pollack you responded when senator menendez just mentioned that they were unwilling to pursue a status of forces agreement. i'm just wondering what you were hoping to say but did it instead with an expression. >> yeah. i think that what was going through my head, both the united states and iraq failed each other and themselves. it was a moment when i think that prime minister maliki was, at best, ambivalent and history has proven would have been beneficial to him. and the united states was am

ambivalent itself about whether it wanted to stay. >> and our focus needs to be on the future but i know ambassador jeffrey has had a give and take publicly in writing about this. is that your impression of what happened during that time? just very brefly. i want to move on to other things. >> very briefly, the administration following the recommendation of its military leaders and my recommendation in 2010 offered to keep troops on. in essence the maliki government and most of the political parties agreed to have troops that got hung up on the question of a status of forces agreement. al maliki was reluctant to do this. controlling the sunnis in government said he would not move any further than maliki would move that undercut how we had done the deal back in 2008 when we had gotten the earlier agreement and, frankly, time ran

out. in terms of how enthusiastic the administration was about it, i had my instructions which were to try to get an agreement. >> so i noticed -- thank you both for that clarification. there's been a discussion of the order of steps that need to take place and there's been a heavy emphasis on getting the right political situation. i think all of you agree with that. some of you would like to see us go ahead and take some steps now. let me ask you general, what do you think -- what are some of the elements of debate that are taking place now relative to -- if you were guessing and my guess is that you actually talked with some of these people from time to time. but prior to us knowing if they are going to have an inclusive government, someone other than maliki, what do you think are some of the elements of the debate that are taking place inside the administration relative to taking some small steps, not something sustained but some of the small steps that

i think y'all mentioned might build morale at a minimum and will stave some of the steps that isil are taking. >> i think there's been a reliance on this as miss slotkin said in a process. this process has, in my view, become a way to not take action. and we're in a situation where isis, as i said, is threat and they are gaining strength. i think there's been discussion of air strikes. and you can't take air strikes on targets without having precision if you see the entities out in the desert. that will only be for fleeting effect. just doing air strikes or drone strikes can have some effect and it won't be lasting or decisive.

i think there is great reluctance to put -- reintroduce american forces. i get that. i understand. but if this is an exestential threat and if the iraqis security forces are the way to deal with this and these iraqi security forces are not prepared or capable of dealing with it, you can't close that circle without external help to these forces. i hope it's not a question of if we should support the iraqi security forces and introduce the steps that i said is a question of when and now and we've had this assessment how quickly. >> so the fear would be paralysis through purposeful, long-term analysis that would

be the fear, just analyzing this forever and not taking action and i also agree with you there is some reticence to get involved militarily. let me ask you this. maliki obviously a -- he may not have been a good prime minister but he understands the debate taking place in our country and knows that him being gone, while we might not have laid out -- and it's a great comment, for y'all to share specifically what they would do if they have this inclusive government. i think that's a great point. but is there -- can you tell if there's any leveraging taking place by maliki right now knowing that we're not going to get involved in any kind of big way if he's still there? is there any activity that is occurring there relative to him trying to leverage us in other

ways? >> dr. pollack might have information as well. i think, first of all he points out correctly that he did very well in the last elections several months ago, winning personally 700,000 votes, which is more than he did in 2010. his party came in first. under the constitution, he should be given by the new president selected today within 15 days an opportunity to form a government. and under the constitutional process, if he can't form it and i think it will be hard for him to form it after 30 days the mandate has to pass to another party. now, that's a lot of time to consume doing this. i think that as a minimum, he's going to want to play this out. and he also may feel that, in the end, the americans having sent -- what was it 775 additional forces to iraq -- are

ready to help them out regardless of what happens. again, i think i and many others have said, under certain circumstances, striking isil where they pose a danger is important. but we cannot provide the whole gamut, the whole breadth of support that they need absolutely unless we have an inclusive government that can bring in the sunnis and the kurds and it won't happen with him, sir. >> just one more question. my time is up and i know all of us probably have to be places. but there was discussion and y'all said this about being a regional approach. and syria and iraq obviously having no border between them anymore, what are some of the dynamics on the syrian side that as we look at this regionally -- i know y'all are just focused on iraq now -- that complicate with

the side being in power there complicate our ability to look at it regionally? >> i'm glad to start senator. i think one of the most obvious problems is the one that i've already mentioned, which is that when you look obama atnly at syria, we do not like the assad regime, we want it gone then the question is to how best help the opposition. when you look at iraq you have a situation where you have a shia group in charge of the government, they are likely to remain in charge of the government and we're going to want to remain good ties with that. simultaneously we have a sunni operation that we do not like and others that we very much like. there's a complexity that is involved. any support to one of these groups becomes complicated by the opposite effect that it has with the other. if we're providing enormous support to sunni in syria, some of that is going to flow to sunni groups in iraq, some of

whom we may not like. but more that we are helping the maliki government in baghdad the more it's going to be seen by folks in the region of supporting the wider shia cause which also encompasses the assad government. we need to recognize the complexity that's been introduced by having wars in iraq and syria that are by in large merged which the region sees as a sunni/shia fight but we see in a much more complex way. >> would you like to add to that? >> if i could, senator. as far as a regional support, we know that -- isis is washing money. but the way to choke these organizations is to go after their financing. now, for the near term, they've got plenty of that. however, we know that there are regional actors supporting them supporting isis. we should employ, as i said in

my statement our intelligence committee to em employee those actors and use every tool department of commerce, department of treasury to go after those actors and these sources of funding. we know, have a good idea where it's coming from, let's identify them and target them as part of a regional approach to this growing problem. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you all for being here. one last set of questions. general, you served in iraq, you led our mission to a train and equipped iraqi forces and when u.s. forces left iraq, it seemed that iraqi forces were on their way to becoming a capable force. so the question that begs the question what happened? why did the isf's capability and capacity erode so quickly? >> senator tough question.

and it's tough to see what has happened and what has happened over the last few years. i've been to iraq many times over the last year since i left active duty. but the isf was built to handle a low level insurgency and our goal was to get them to where they were good enough. frankly, when i was there in 2009 and 2010 and part of 2011 there would be advisers to continue the training. we knew -- i did an assessment in 2010 for then for the general and this is where the forces will be in 2011. we wanted to convince them and show them the capabilities and shortfalls of their forces.

some were very obvious. they couldn't control their own air space nor defend it. but we said you have a sustainment problem. your military readiness is in a death spiral. your command control structure is not workable. this peace time for a command and control of the population directly to the prime minister has to change. you do not have an nco core. most fundamentally, we told iraqis, you must invest in training. good armies train continuously. we didn't see that before we left and i don't see any evidence of that since then. so you know the short answer is that the development that needs to take place with the iraqi security forces from december 2011 to july 2014 hasn't taken place.

we can go back and forth about advisers and trainers but they have not -- >> and so if that is the case, what will advisers now be able to do at this stage that will make a difference on the ground with iraqi forces? >> well, when we were on the ground with them and advising and training, it did make a dins difference. first, we can stop the bleeding. they are under severe duress. isis did not let up. if this is a -- in our interests, then we need to get something in there to a, stop the bleeding and then start building the forces. this is not going to take weeks or months. this is going to take a while to get them to a state. as i said in my comments unless we have an iraqi government that's willing to accept these

changes and willing to place these changes into their structure and the way they do business, then i would question whether we should do it. >> two last questions. can air strikes alone -- i think you alluded to this in your answer to senator corker's questions. but can air strikes alone make a difference in pushing back isis or would doing them now just be in essence giving the iraqis a boost? >> air strikes can make a difference, a tactical difference. they can help enable iraqi forces. they can help relieve pressure. they can help degrade isis' capabilities. my point is we cannot think that just through air strikes and drone strikes we can solve

this problem. or i would even hold it in advance. it could -- they would make a difference. it would not be a divisive difference. >> and so the flip -- the other side of this then is the training and assist so that the -- but the iraqi forces, can they possibly recover the country even with the training and assisting? >> i think they could. >> you think they could? >> i think they could. >> we're talking about what period of time? >> months. that's not going to happen overnight. >> senator if i could support general barbero i've seen it myself, i was in vietnam as an army officer in '72. the vietnamese army invaded for the first time and started melting mosul.

billions of dollars of u.s. equipment was lost within days. then when we started air strikes, it changed the psychology of those forces almost overnight and within three months they had recovered almost the entire country. we saw in libya kosovo and bosnia where air strikes can provide lightly equipped, sometimes not too well trained forces. the difference in taking on better equipped forces as brett mcgurk i think three times described earlier today, dealing with the tribe up near mosul, dealing with the people and governor they are outgunned. they have volunteers to go into northern falluja but they are out numbered. not boots on the ground can make a huge difference sir. >> one last question for you

general. are you surprised by the alarming reports of iraqi security forces, abuses, infiltration by shia militia and lack of accountability and how do we engage with the iraqi forces to deal with those challenges? >> senator, i was in irbil baghdad, in late may. the developments of mosul since then was a shock. i was shocked by it. but as i drive around baghdad or basra or other places over the last year, it's a checkpoint army. and i've said that. and you cannot take on an isis if you've been in static position on the defense and not trained for offensive operations. what is troubling, as you ride up to these army checkpoints, there are shia religious banners almost at every one, across

baghdad and certainly in basra. there must be a fundamental change in the nature of these forces, not only in the government but in the forces to allow participation by a sunni and kurds in this unified effort that it would require. >> well, i appreciate your insights. i'm not a military guy, but i will say that when an american soldier volunteers joins, he fights for a cause for a principle, for a set of values. he fights for his nation. he or she fights for their nation. if the job is just a job, then it doesn't turn out the same way. and if it's difficult to get an iraqi army if you don't feel you are fighting for the totality of a country, shia, sunny, and

kurd. and that's a real problem and that's a real problem. anyhow, i appreciate all of your insights as we grapple with the choices we have to make. this record will remain open until the close of business tomorrow with the thanks of this committee, this hearing is hours.

>> good morning. >> good morning and i thank you all for coming today because we appreciate you being here. i am the director of the homeland security project at the bipartisan policy center which is a nonpartisan bipartisan think tank. this includes tom daschle and bob dole, who today are here to celebrate the first day of the 9/11 commission report. but i'd be remiss to say that it's also the 91st of day of bob

dole. so we are happy to celebrate that today as well. [applause] on behalf of everyone i want to say thank you for coming and i want to thank the end of her public policy center and we have their representatives here as well. right over there and we will be hearing more from kathleen and michael and her team and we thank them very much for the support. without them we could not have made this happen. so we thank you for the help to the public policy center. i have a mother that i lost on september 11, 2001. so it is a anniversary for me and many other 9/11 victims, many who are here in the room. my mother was lost and carol ashley is here and for us the

commission report was a bit of an end of the journey and so for the members who are in this room, their journey started in early 2003 but for the 9/11 families, our journey started sooner. i remembered distinctly. it was generally 30th 2002 and i was returning home to boston from washington dc and we had been advocating on behalf of other family members with lawmakers about issues related to the compensation fund and i was reading an article on the flight home and the article said that president bush wanted to only have investigation into the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11 and not anything else and i thought, ours has been average ordinary citizen who got caught up in a

terrible tragedy on september 11. i couldn't understand why our government wouldn't want to investigate all that had happened or it simply to make sure that it never happened again. and so we five the 9/11 family members, we thought for many months and we have a lot of noise about that and i think we will all remember our rally in june. we didn't know it that well. and it was clear that they knew what they were doing and we had many meetings with many members of congress and someone while in others not so well. we were not experts in how washington works and so when we were told no the answer was why not. and we had a conversation with one member of congress and i

said i don't understand why you won't investigate my mom's murder if i pulled out a gun and shot you right now, the police would do an investigation. and that was a mistake. his staff got a little tense and i had to explain no, i'm not saying i'm going to do that, and the name you don't understand what the differences. and so i never did that again. we had meetings in the white house who i don't think officials are being used to ask why not. i had to get used to that with us. when a member of congress hit in his office because he didn't want to talk to us we said we that we could hear him breathing on the door. so for us, that was the process of creating this commission and you can imagine the lumley finally did create a and it was signed into law the day before thanksgiving 2002, for us that

was the beginning again. and this time we had to meet the commissioner and he's like who are these people? and there are a few bumps and bruises along the way. once we got introduced, we knew that we were in good hands, and of course they stand behind a report that is releasing today. and so we knew that we had a great team of people these people are still here

today and they are doing whatever they can to make our nation stronger and safer and more secure and i would love to be able to introduce them all as they release their new reports. so with that, i'm going to invite the congressman up to the stage and they are going to give a few remarks and then we will open it up for all commissioners for q&a. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you so much. >> kerry terry has been the spark plug for this whole thing and thank you for making this day great. so good morning and i think all of you. i think all of you for coming this morning. we are here to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 commission report, a document that led to major reforms in the way that we do intelligence. and we come together today to present to the public a new

public paper entitled today's rise and the danger to the united states amount reflections, and anniversary reflection on the 9/11 report. worse, i want to thank my company chairman and commissioners. and i'm sorry that the couple were not able to be here today. they are a remarkable group of people come in the most remarkable group that i've ever had the chance to work with than many agree with every word that we are representing. a special thanks to julie anderson and carry us through. and we thank carrie lemak as

well as the number policy center who have generously supported this project and have made important contributions along the way. michael and adam held and we are also grateful to many other former 9/11 commission staffers and we voluntarily have come a long way to make this a work possible. we want to talk about the contributions of the families of 9/11 and we are humbled by everything you have done in the fact that here you are once again today and we used to refer to you as the wind in our sails and 10 years later you are here with us again and we are so grateful. until last fall we began to consider the 10th anniversary

and then the idea that if we got ourselves together maybe we could do something useful. and so we all wanted to look back 10 years ago and we think that there could be less than. a lot of bipartisanship that has enabled us to do almost nothing in this town these days. but we think there might be less than as to how they get together to do something like they did 10 years ago. we also believe that one area where no partisanship should exist is in protecting the country and we must have bipartisanship in that area. a paper released this morning as a result of more than eight months of thinking and studying and spirited conversation. to better inform ourselves, we have reached out to many of our countries with senior and former national security officials as responsibility to

counterterrorism. everyone who reached out was cooperative and helpful and honest in their discussion with the problems that plague this country and the problems of protecting this country from the threat of terrorists abroad. and we came away from that experience with renewed admiration and very dedicated public servant. we have separate conversations with each of the leaders and yet there was a broad agreement about what the current problems are facing the country and some of the similar solutions to talk about only hope that we succeeded in doing our part to amplify for the public that common threats or part of it and at this point i would like to ask not just my cochairman of my close friend, lee hamilton who is instrumental in every one of

these efforts to talk for a minute and summarize what we learned and the key points to invite our fellow commissioners. [applause] >> good morning to all of you. i have always threatened to set up a hall of name for public servants. we have a hall of fame for guitar players and we should have them for public servants as well. when that is set up, i'm going to recommend that the is other nine commissioners go in on the first ballot. they are an extraordinary group of americans and the high privilege for me to be a part of it. i report breaks down into three parts and the first talks about the evolving threat in the second part talks about the policy challenges in the third part talks about the recommendations.

and i will not go into great detail but i will hit the highlights in each of these areas. and so we begin by saying that the government has done a good job but not a perfect job over the last 10 years in protecting us from terrorist attacks. we have experienced tragedies like four to in the boston marathon bombings, but we have not suffered anything at all like 9/11 and the magnitude of that attack. our military and intelligence forces have done great damage to the afghanistan-based horror of al qaeda most notably killing osama bin laden three years ago and these really are significant achievements. we are concerned that attention is shifting to other matters. that the country may be suffering from a waning sense of urgency with respect to

terrorist attacks and a possible attack and it is imperative that we believe that we go against that. despite her achievements, the threat of terrorism is a today and al qaeda spinoffs sure the extreme ideology and hatred of the united states which has proliferated and are now operational in more than 16 countries. a great concern is the fanatical islamic state of islam in syria which has conquered much of western iraq, slaughtering thousands on the way. the territory it holds greatly expands the sanctuary for terrorists and increases the threat to the united state and the west. while that group has been a growing threat over the last months and years it has

accelerated advances suggest that the word has been that the world is a more dangerous place. dozens of americans and as many as a thousand europeans have traveled to join in the conflict. the danger is very real that they may redirect their battlefield skills they have acquired and return to our shores to attack us. al qaeda in the arabian finance possesses advanced bomb making skills which have now been passed extremist in syria and iraq and that poses a serious threat to us. in particular, of course, to commercial aviation. homeland parallelism that is terrorist attacks launched by lone wolves who have been radicalized over the internet is

another rising danger. the 9/11 commission recommendations centered on how to protect this country from terrorism. our recent conversations with a large number of national security leaders have highlighted another major threat to the country and that is of course, the relentless cyberattacks from foreign countries and criminal elements. the vulnerability of our cybersystem and the most vast ceiling of intellectual property over the internet pose a huge national security challenge and our cyberdefenses and strategy like behind the representative that we face in the cyberrealm. and in the last 10 years the scale of government data collection has boomed. data collection and analysis are vital tools to preventing

terrorist attacks. but effective counterterrorism must be balanced against civil liberties and vigorous oversight of collection activities by the congress and the court is urgently needed and it is the government's burden to explain to the public what is being done by the government and also to persuade the public that the tools being utilized are absolutely necessary and that a balance is struck between security and privacy. and congress is committee structure for overseeing homeland security continues to be dysfunctional. we use our word in a report it came from members of congress and key positions. this splendored jurisdiction is episodic and inadequate and

threatens our national security. this dysfunction has lasted for far too long and our friends at the annenberg public policy center have run in recent days this advertisement in the news ever giving you the flowchart, if you will, of oversight some 90 committees roughly over homeland security. that of course, completely unacceptable. on the positive side, the director of the national intelligence and the national counterterrorism center on ensuring that the various intelligence agencies work together and there has been real improvement there and that is progress. as noted the report also talks about how we have done our work a decade ago and it calls for

bipartisanship too often go unheeded and we hope that our actions point in the direction of our political leaders might come to agreement on the difficult terrorism challenge that we face today and in the future. surely our political leaders and political polarization to better protect the united states and all americans in many ways we are safer today than we were a decade ago but the threat continues and is urgent and the generational struggle that we refer to in our original report against terrorism has entered a new days and the world remains a very dangerous place. we cannot let our guard down. i would like to turn to other

members of the commission for any comments that they would like to make and i will follow them as they are ready to proceed. governor thompson. >> we thank you and first i would like to say that participating in the work of this commission has been one of the greatest honors of my public life. not only that challenge that we undertook but the men and women who went to work on it in an extraordinary bipartisan fashion. which leads me to sometimes a very sad place and it's appropriate that we are in washington today. as i think everyone on this stage would acknowledge, i think it is almost embarrassing to

contemplate that the congress of the united states which has protected this nation sends its earth cannot seem today to protect the american people by coming together to enact those laws which everyone must include and which bear no partisan label. i accept that our nation is divided perhaps by party and perhaps by philosophy and issues like abortion and gay rights and taxation and highway programs and all the other things which the congress deals. but surely there is no republican or democratic position in making sure that people who come to the united states with terrorist ambitions don't stay here and plot the failure of this country to have

a biometric exit program so that we know who is still here in violation of the law and who may harbor feelings towards her nation. so i don't understand why the congress of the united states has not come together on the issue of cybersecurity, which we mentioned. every american has either had an experience where they have been hacked or people with whom they deal have been hacked and we have all had to change passwords or get a new credit card and if we have not experienced it personally, we have certainly read about it. so is there any reason in the world by the congress cannot enact comprehensive cybersecurity law that protects us not only from the criminal

hackers but from the terrorist hackers as well. and from nationstate to give comfort and aid to the terrorists. so i would like to see that the congress of the put aside all the nonsense and all the appeals and preening around and come together to protect this nation. that is the first obligation of government. the first obligation. nothing else can be done for this country if we are not secure and to this point, the congress of the united state is failing us and failing us fast. >> thank you jim. commissioner?

>> i would like to say briefly three things. first of all, i would like to recognize the extraordinary leadership of tom kane and lee hamilton. from the first meeting that we had of the 9/11 commission when they pledged to do virtually everything together never appearing on the tv show without the other one. lessons to the other eight commissioners were extraordinarily profound as we had been attacked, we had lost almost 3000 of our citizens and we were going to get to the bottom of this and work across partisan lines and produce a room where that would make america safer. so all the way through we showed

this great leadership for the commission and also for our country and i also want to say to my fellow commissioners that i have been blessed with a lot of different opportunities to serve our country. and i can't think of anything that has touched my heart and soul and my brain and learn more than from the people that we have worked with over the past 10 years and a loot you all and i thank you for your leadership for our country. and also you want to recognize the 9/11 family members and the people who helped us create the 9/11 commission and looking into what happened and why. and if marian carroll and avon carry and all of you haven't been there to hold people

accountable, to hold us accountable, to hold congress accountable and the white house accountable, we wouldn't be sitting here today and we wouldn't be safe. so who knows if we would've been attacked again if it hadn't been for all of you getting on planes and tanks and literally in the middle of the night coming down to washing me from your homes in new york and connecticut and all over the country and help make this country safer by breaking down these barriers of partisanship rather than putting our national security front and center. so i want to thank these wonderful 9/11 family members that have made extraordinary contributions to our country. second, i would like to say that the challenges that the united states of america faced today to

understand and to be proactive and to be smart about the changes taking place in the world, before we are attacked again, this is one of the most important lessons. we have isys taking over large swaths of territory in the middle east syria is an incubator for terrorist training and hatred around the world and people starting to come back from these training grounds and the united states, al qaeda now pre-9/11 now they are in 16 countries around the world and this is a new and dangerous phase that the united states of america is entering into. and so the congress the white house, policymakers, they must work together to understand is very significant challenges to the safety of the united states.

jim mentioned cybersecurity and how important matters. and we have a litany of different areas that policymakers must pay greater attention to. as a former member of congress who served in the great midwest for six terms, as someone who believes that those founding fathers called it the first branch of government. sadly today it is the last branch that people in our country are looking for to solve our problems. and that cannot be the case as we see these challengers of cybersecurity and isys and al qaeda and possibly creating another 9/11 type of attack. and so we encourage congress and

we'll have a panel on this to take this seriously to reorganize the massive bureaucracy that they have on the department of homeland security that is bigger oversight today of what we have are oversight for the department of defense. 500 billion-dollar defense program with a smaller number of committees overseeing and in the department of homeland security where we have 92 different committees and of committees. fragmented dysfunctional, potentially disruptive to our national security. with akamai look forward to the questions and answers and i appreciate the opportunity. >> thank you, jim. >> are there any other commissioners?

>> let me just say one thing. i hope you get a sense of the practice grew past because everyone always asked how did you reach unanimity on a reported when you look at a commission that was basically designed to fail splitting it evenly and lectionary and how did that happen and i think that you can get a sense of how it happened as to what comes with the universally wonderful experience and certainly one that gave us a lot of pride and also one that was very were warning and i want to mention one thing because this happened the list that we have a recommendation or is important.

..

speak up into the microphone if you could please. >> in covering this issue for the last ten years and watching sorry wto pete national correspondent. covering this issue and watching how the world has changed since then, it occurs to me that in the last few years things are happening faster. more things are happening faster. so the question i ask is based on the conversation with the general about a year or so ago when he told me that it doesn't apply anymore.

it's protecting the u.s. against the rapidly evil thing threats and others and i take the answer from anybody. we will proceed in the rules that allow me to answer these questions and i will give the test questions out here. we will start with the commissioners here and that is a tough question. >> the answer is you have to be moran and bolts and you've been before. the rocker sees come any governmentgovernment proxies by the nature of that bureaucracy slow in action. that's why it's called a bureaucracy. you can't afford any it anymore and homeland security. you have to be memorable. the idea that when we wrote the 9/11 report years ago we didn't mention cybersecurity. no one even mentioned it in the

deliberations. it was not a big problem. now it's a problem every single person we interviewed said should be right up front. the world is changing as we speak. if iraq became a failed state it moved right to the top of the problems in the last three or four months we've seen it become a failed state basically service comes right to the top. it's constantly changing. in the intelligence areas and the congressional oversight we have to be more noble here than almost any other area because it will change the time there are these groups now that didn't even exist ten years ago that we have to be concerned about. there are new weapons we have to

be concerned about and explosives for the answer is we have to have the best thinkers in this area of homeland security and to be willing to use what we call in the report imagination. there can be no more failures of imagination. we have to get ahead of them. >> i would just add two points to the answer. we didn't present a menu of things we think need to be done. right there is the reorganization of the oversight of the homeland security process. and i was general counsel at dod that chairman of the joint chiefs was any regular dialogue with the oversight committees in the house and the senate, two of them. the chairs and ranking members knew what he was thinking and they knew what he was saying in.

we don't have that with regard to homeland security. you couldn't do it if you wanted to. we would have a chair to leave to chance to talk in a little while, but i think it is -- if you look at the chart we hamilton held up, it would be impossible to have a sense on the executive side of what would be acceptable in the congress in a short period of time with the structure that we have. so the edge of the events tom talked about is critical. you need an organization on the executive branch site but also a fully armed partner on the congressional side and i don't think we have that. >> to the rapidly evil thing

technology, we all understand that and and about what is useful today may not be tomorrow and things we cannot even imagine may be coming along i ensure they will. but what we are looking at is a framework within which the government and the private sector can accommodate each other's interests in preventing cyber attacks. does the military of the united states or the nsa possessed knowledge experience that can be useful to the private sector, to the utilities, all of whom can expect some kind of cyber attacks because it's happened before? the answer to that is yes.

do we have a framework in the united states air the military the nsa other branches of government can sit down with the private sector whose interests are vital to the welfare of the united states and work together so that everybody is protected to the extent that current technology will allow the answer to that is no. why don't we have that? there can't be a republican or democratic position on this. i can't imagine that. is something the congress is doing today more important? please tell me what it is. that is one of the answers too your question is important.

the speed of change is comparable not to a bullet train but a speeding bullet almost literally. we are seeing terrorists that ten years ago used to go to trading camps in the northwest territory of pakistan and be trained and radicalized and potentially go to their targets. today they are radicalized in months or weeks over the internet. so the speed of change and the speed of radicalization in the cyber technology to attack the banks are f-22 programs and steal information in and the security is incredibly rapid and quick. so as tom said, we cannot afford to have rocker sees put in washington, d.c. to fight these nimble networks. we need networks to fight networks, not bureaucracies to fight that works.

>> please identify yourself. >> prior to the attack on 9/11 the groups responsible had received aid from us back when the soviets were occupied in afghanistan. today we are associated with groups of an extremist nature. look at who took over libya. probably we have facilitated the rise through our training of the sort of insurgents we hoped would take over in serious. are you concerned we are facilitating the growth of the

groups that in the end will prove to be our enemy x. >> and he's sensational commissioners are reluctant on that one. >> i think if we had been born in bowling our facilities dealing with the issue in syria we might have prevented some of the more radical anti-administration forces from gaining the strength that they had but we deliberately chose not to encourage those that we thought were moderate if you can have a force by ideology.

we didn't give the weapons our military i think thought they should have so while there may be some truth in what you are saying, i don't think it is appropriate to go back to the aid that we gave in afghanistan countering the soviet threat. my guess is that is to long ago and far away and doesn't have a lot of relevance to the challenges we are facing now. >> senator gordon. >> ten years ago this group decided that it could be a value only as it looked forward to more than backward and in our report we didn't criticize that

individuals or administrations for what happened in the past in the use of the 2020 hindsight and i think that if you look at what we are doing today we have adopted the same philosophy. we get a good deal of credit and i think the credit is deserved through the response of the country and the administration to 9/11 and we haven't had another. we also emphasize however the challenges changed very substantially with many on the threat of cyber security that our recommendations look forward to saying how we can be safer in the future and to deal with these challenges in the future and it is only by looking for forward rather than backward

with criticism that we can be of value and we hope the congress takes our recommendations seriously and act on them seriously but it will do that best by looking forward rather than backward >> one thing to keep in mind in the very nuanced areas is that looking forward we need to learn from history and i suppose the question of support for the mujahedin in opposing the arrival enemy in the soviets is instructed in that once the aid is given and the weapons are

transferred there is no guarantee about how they would be used in so i think that is proven to be instructed in the current situation so that letting go of and arming various factions doesn't guarantee how the training will ultimately be used in the area that is intensely nuanced and difficult to predict. >> your question points out the complexity in the middle east. there are so many different groups out there. there are so many crosscurrents taking place. so many shifting alliances that it's a very difficult thing to keep up with. there is no one in the united states government that wants to

facilitate in any but your caught an eight complex world every day i pick up the paper and learn about support the opposition to syria. there are 1500 opposition groups in syria. sort through those loyal to see who's going to help you and whose products we have been doing for several years of course so it is a complexity. i'm told we have time for one more question. the changing nature of the threat highlights the importance of information and intelligence collected domestically and disseminated domestically. who is in charge of domestic intelligence and how to state, local and federal law enforcement fit into your findings?

>> you raised a very good question and it's something we have talked about. there is far more sharing after the report then there has been and that is good news from all quarters that we've talked to. we hear good marks given to the integration of material and the sharing of information. the state and local authorities are the greatest areas for enhancement for the protection. and so while there have begun to be greater efforts made to share information, more needs to be done as we say in a report to bring state and local authorities into an integrated

national approach there is more to be done. stomach we will be hearing from the director of intelligence and there has been as richard says a lot of partners. the intelligence community as you all know is a very vast community. billions of dollars and many leaders and the state of integration to last ten years has been quite remarkable so there is much more cohesion than in the previous times but it's a work in progress and we have to keep working at it. who is in charge of the intelligence community as a question that invites all kinds of answers the director of national intelligence has functioned very well and has done a lot towards integrating

the community and coordinating the community and he will be speaking to us very shortly. i think that his wartime up for questions and we'll turn it to you to get moving along here. [applause] we are going to transfer into the first panel and invite all of the commissioners to please come up except for jamie since she's going to be leaving the discussion and we are pleased to be joined by the chairman and i'm going to leave it to cheney today proper introduction but i just want to say a few words to make the transition that this panel is about the state and evolution of the threat and has many ofasmany of you know the homeland security project started in annual series of reports. we've released the first one who

is here with us today and we are planning to release a new one this september. so based on that release today and the work in the past few years the threat is evolving. it's involving the counterterrorism measures accordingly and no group is doing that more thoroughly than the homeland security committee and not only today are joined by the chairman for the members of the staff in the audience who want to thank them for their hard work keeping the data should donationsafe and secure. we are glad that they are here with us today. i also want to take a quick opportunity to thank the staff here with us today. there's a large number of them and many have gone to continue serving the country in a wide range of positions and we are

glad they can take the time not to be here to honor the report they worked so hard on ten years ago. with that i'm going to turn it over to the commissioner and begin the discussions on the state and evolution. >> we are honored to have mike with us and there is no one better suited to discuss the issues and the tenth anniversary report. the chairman is chair man is a ten year veteran of congress representing a really robust and interesting district in texas and he has a background that is perfect for the role at least in my view since i'm a former justice department official and he served in that department with distinction and is quite familiar with some of the mechanisms by which we keep our

country safe so thank you for being here and helping us think through some of these issues today. i would like to start where the conversation just left off and put on the table this question of who is responsible for protecting us in a very complex environment. we made a couple of observations as lee hamilton just said we talked about the success is the director of the structure finally getting to a place where there is cohesion among the agencies and we talked about the importance of the collection of information in the world in which intelligence and intelligence analysis as the best rule. we talk about that national counterterrorism center that

brings together the information that is quite successful and we also talk about the modeling that the president does for his intelligence agencies and why personally calling them together on a regular basis to share information with him and each other so those are the observations in very brief -- i'm wondering if you can comment on the state of the integration and the robust ability to protect ourselves. i want to think the bipartisan policy center for hosting this and the commission report after 9/11 for the most part it was implemented and we will talk about some pieces that were not and i want to thank the members of the commission here today i think members of congress will take back to the hill and i want to thank them for their

resounding endorsement for the congress. [laughter] i also want to thank jamie for having me. she was the deputy attorney general for the united states and i was a lonely federal prosecutor at the time of the justice but i remember she was very much a force within the department and did a great job and it's an honor to be with you today. now i guess on an even level. i was. at the bottom of the integrity section but if i could just start by saying everything that i've attempted to do in my committee and in fact everything we have done legislatively has passed unanimously and i think that is important and governor thompson made a great point this

is an area that shouldn't be a partisan issue when it comes to protecting the american people and saving lives. so whether it was our cybersecurity bill that passed unanimously that hopefully will be on the floor in the next month or whether it was our border security bill which if you read the papers lately there's a bit of a crisis on going down there hopefully that will be part of our supplemental coming out that also passed unanimously and i believe that's a very important factor because it doesn't have any partisan affiliation. they have one thing in common and that is they have a deep-seated hatred for them and they still unfortunately want to kill us. the threat has evolved. when i first got elected the chairman i landed and i landed in washington and said there has been a bombing in boston. and i think the boston accent

over that illustrates the new devolving threats that we are seeing an episode of radicalization over the internet in terms of small-scale operations. the good work that the commission did i think stopped by connecting the dots and using the imagination as you either did it to its stopped a lot of the larger scale attacks like the 9/11 style that would be difficult to pull off in today's world the way the intelligence community is set up and homeland security but i think the smaller scale are difficult to detect and to disrupt and probably more likely the evildoing threat that you're going to see and then it's been talked about extensively this marriage if you will end and manpower the manpower for severe seeing in iraq and syria is a

huge threat to the secretary will tell you the biggest threat threats to the homeland and the aviation sector so i think that's going to be very important for us to focus on their safe havens but people ask me army saves and in some respects we are safer thanks to the good work of the 9/11 commission. we implemented the rules of the recommendations but it's an evolving threat but in some respects we are not safer because all qaeda owns nor territory now today than it ever has and in 16 different countries as you heard all of these different affiliate aqap. it's interesting how they say that it is too extreme. imagine they would say that it's too extreme for al qaeda.

that is a tremendous threat of extent that extending the caliphate in that region. i think in my judgment it surpasses what we saw in iraq and afghanistan and pakistan in terms of the training grounds. it's that they have cleaned about legal trouble documents. they are pouring in every day from the fight and some people tell you who they all are and i will tell you that we don't have a high degree of certainty. i can talk about cyber for 30 minutes but it's one of those things that keeps you up at night because we have a tremendous capability to shut things down. they've already tried to shut

down the financial institutions that they are out there and the chinese are stealing through espionage according to the nsa director and we just picked up the billions of dollars of intellectual property theft in the united states said this is a real threat and i hope this bill we get out of the committee will pass because it's something the country really needs right now. >> let me go back for a moment to the situation in iraq and syria where you have observed that there are probably thousands of european fighters and in the neighborhood of 100 or so fighters. if an individual in the passport or a european passport where

they gain entry to the united states over the visa waiver program can travel here with impunity what are our resources for identifying those people and stopping them and do we have the legal authority that we need a. one thing you haven't seen as the 9/11 style attack because we are getting good at stopping the enemy from coming into the united states. most people think of it as who protects the airport with tsa does a good job in the intelligence overhaul stopping threats from coming into the united states. this is going to be the key. number one how can we identify the threats and syria and iraq or it has intentions to harm the west. you have to start first with

intelligence. i will be the first to leave the human intelligence is and where it needs to be on the ground in syria. we are getting better reconnaissance as to where these actors are but in terms of identifying them on a personal case-by-case basis i don't think we are where we need to be. you saw the restrictions on travel in terms of screening that's been ramped up in a certainthecertain airports the ones most likely to be used by the foreign fighters to identify a certain category that would fit the terrorist profile for the additional screening with respect to different devices that the best i can go into that subject matter. that is going to be effective but remember we can't sustain that the children's for more than several months and then we have to break things down. i'm concerned about is when we ran things down again and decide they are good at backing off and

waiting and then making a move and so they can travel freely and easily get into the united states. these briefings are very eerie when you get briefed on the level of expertise they have and that they haven't given up. they haven't given up on blowing up airplanes and it's amazing to me they have a tremendous expertise to build types of bombs that could potentially get through our screening, the nonmetallic like the underwear bomber. i think there are cautions in place now at the foreign airports but we can't keep that high vigilance forever. >> let me return to the question of organization.

tom and lee showed this bewildering chart reflecting the organizational structure of the oversight of the department of homeland security. i thought he was even nicer than he needed to be on the subject because he didn't know it as the report does that we complained about the department of homeland security having 88 committees and subcommittees to oversee and now it has 92. presumably you would be the recipient of a consolidated jurisdiction so maybe this is an awkward question to ask you but is it achievable and possible that we could have the same sort of structure from homeland security that we do for example in the sense. >> i will be speaking at the

aspen institute on the topic and i appreciate the commission's leadership on this and calling attention to an issue that i honestly have to deal with every day and it's very, very frustrating as the chairman of a major committee that at the but at the same time to be so handicap. you showed of the chart. policy wise we know it the right thing to do but the problem. jurisdiction is the holy grail but the right for the opportunity to have gotten this done at the very beginning and we complain about the executive branch not working together and i think the congress is just as if not more guilty of that and i will give you two examples. the cybersecurity bill has multiple referrals that are jurisdictions that requires me to negotiate with other