>> congressman hamilton and with gr mccain, the country is not as safe as it should or could be because we have not reformed oversight at the department of homeland security. we placed an ad using that quote from congressman hamilton showing not only the fact dhs secretary support reform, but so, too, does a who's who of the national security commission. the problem looks like this. the solution is going to be discussed by this distinguished panel. it's my pleasure to introduce sioban gorman, reporter for "the wall street journal" covering terrorism, counterterrorism and intelligence. she won the 2006 delta chi award

for her coverage of the national security agency and in 2000 received a citation from the education writers' association. she will moderate our panel. >> thank you so much, and thanks for joining us for our, i guess, officially unsexy panel. [laughter] but congressional reform is probably the most high profile reform that has never fully or really at all been embraced. and in their ten-year report looking at the current state of play for national security, the commission cites there's actually been a proliferation of committees that are now responsible for counterterrorism and homeland security types of issues. we're now up from 88 to 92, so i guess that's some kind of accomplishment that we'll discuss here. the report also highlights another congressional oversight problem in another realm which is actually too little

congressional oversight when it comes to certain types of programs like sensitive intelligence programs, particularly as we've seen recently those that were highlighted in the snowden revelations where we saw, we have seen and are seeing significant congressional blowback to the way that some of those programs have been conducted and in particular the secrecy around them. so we'll be discussing problems of both too much and too little oversight as well as other issues with a distinguished panel including ambassador tim roemer who is former ambassador to india during the obama administration, and there he managed a range of issues between the two countries including technology transfer, counterterrorism and nuclear energy. he's well known as both a former six-term congressman from indiana and a former member of the nerve commission. -- the 9/11 commission. he's also served as president for the center on national policy, and he's now senior

director and strategic counselor at apco worldwide and serves on the national commission on the future of the fbi. governor tom ridge is a former governor of pennsylvania, and he served as the first homeland security secretary, so he's really done a lot of work in the trenches on the kinds of issues we're about to discuss. there he oversaw the merger of 22 agencies and 180,000 employees. after graduating from law school, governor ridge was drafted into the army where he served as an infantry staff sergeant in vietnam earning the the bronze star for valor and the vietnamese cross of gallantry. he went on to serve as congressman for pennsylvania. he's ceo of ridge global where he advises businesses and governments on security issues, and we see sort of a pattern here, a cybersecurity firm he founded with former white house adviser howard schmidt. and we also have ken wainstein

who served as homeland security adviser -- we've got two former homeland security advisers on the panel -- in president george bush's second term. prior to that post he spent 19 years after the justice department including the first attorney general for national security, launching the national security division there. and he also served as general counsel at the federal bureau of investigation. he's now the chair of white collar and defense, the white collar and defense investigations group, he's also a member of the director's advisory board of the national counterterrorism center, a member of the public interest declassification board, a member of the cia council's external advisory board and chairman of the legal panel of the national security agency advisory board. so with that, i think everyone wanted to start with a few opening thoughts. we'll start with body roe --

ambassador roemer. >> thank you. i'm delighted to join secretary ridge and ken. i'd just like to start by trying to refute what was owned with right away, and that is the fact that this is a boring and unsexy topic. so the 9/11 -- >> we all agree. [laughter] >> the 9/11 commission said the system was blinking red, hair was on fire, something terrible was about to happen. and then we outlined why mistakes were made and maybe how things could have been prevented. we now have seven different commissions and groups that have told congress you need to change and reform the way you oversee our homeland security or else something bad might happen.

and now we find ourselves five and ten and thirteen years later, congress has still refused to act. they have acted to reform other agencies, other exte bran -- executive branch departments, and they have they would fastly refused to change themselves. that must change. we say that very specifically in this report. secondly, we say it's important because the work that members of congress, the work that they do, the men and women that work up there work on committees that oversee the department of agriculture or education or department of homeland security. and now with things changing so rapidly in the world, with isis or isil taking over large swaths of territory to, al-qaeda expanding now to 16 different countries around the world, cybersecurity coming at us like

a speeding bullet every day, we need a department that can act quickly and and has vision and a budget to take on these new threats. and still congress has 92 different committees and subcommittees to try to oversee this. that is unsustainable. we need a smaller committee, an integrated committee, a committee with experts that can help set the budget and the vision for the department of homeland security as it enters into now these new threats and the challenges of these new threats. and thirdly, it's important because as congress makes all these different people come up to 92 different committees and subcommittees, we waste their valuable time. we waste the resources. we waste millions of dollars in taxpayers' money. and we hear congress all the

time talk about waste, fraud and abuse, waste, fraud and abuse, how bad that is. here is a great example of waste, fraud and abuse. and how congress could do it better. so we're hopeful by talking about it in these terms and having people like especially secretary ridge talk from his perspective on homeland security why this must be done now. not five years from now, not ten years from now after an attack, why it must be now. >> very good. well, it's very difficult to add much to what my colleague just said, but let me try to supplement his observations with a few of my own. this is the bipartisan policy center, so i'm going to take a leap of faith, and on behalf of secretary johnson, secretary knoll low -- napolitano, secretary chertoff and yours

truly, my plea today isn't to you, but to the leadership of the house and the senate: do something with regard to the massive, inefficient, ineffective oversight procedures dealing with the department of homeland security. we speak with one voice across the board, republicans and democrats, on this. and it's going to require some leadership in the house and in the senate. it's structural, it's organizational, it's not sexy, but as tim pointed out, i cannot imagine in my wildest imagination have only come to one conclusion as to the either inability or unwillingness of congress to ore configure -- reconfigure itself so it cana more effective partner in the maturation of the department, so it can be a more effective leader in dealing with the, frankly, the escalating threat environment from the physical to the cyber over which department

of homeland security has so much control and jurisdiction. i can think of only one reason, and it's about turf. tim and i both sat in the congress of the united states for 12 years, both six terms, right? proud to have done it. and tim and i would -- lee hamilton would tell you. on the way to the floor after we vacated committee or subcommittee hearings, people would be expressing their profound distaste and displeasure, there are too many committees among too many subcommittees. i go in for half an hour, 45 minutes, particularly when c-span's there, do my thing and move on. they don't, they do not develop. there are not enough people who develop centers of excellence in their individual committees. that's not a criticism, that's a fact of life. and so what the bipartisan policy center is simply saying in a post-9/11 world where the threat has evolved both in terms of numbers of al-qaeda-like

organizations, basically, the connective tissue of al-qaeda is now in about 16 different regions, 16 different countries. and one could argue that the threat, the terrorist threat today is even greater than it was on september 11th, september 12, 2001. and so it's a matter of turf on the hill. there is absolute imperative to maximize the efficiency and the effectiveness of this department given its escalating role within the safety and security of this country to just think not about the turf that you sit on in the committees that you sit on, but the turf you're obliged to do everything you can to secure, and that's the turf of the united states. it's a leadership thing, folks. it's not that it can't be done, it's about generating the will to get it done. and hopefully, public forums like this -- and, i mean, if you

think about it, can there be with two more influential people in the committee than the governor and the congressman, tom and lee, who are asked by the congress of the united states to pull together an incredible board, give us your recommendations, tell us what you think needs to be done. the fact they have done it, they've reiterated it time and time and time again. you've got four secretaries of the department of homeland security and you have the intelligence community, you have military leaders, you have the law enforcement community. there is a consensus, bipartisan consensus, republicans and democrats all across, those whose responsibility is to secure america to the united states congress saying you need to change your jurisdiction of your committees. it's too diffuse, it's too disparate. and i'll also tell you another thing, as long as it stays that

way, you're going to have individual -- i'm not going to say this, i'm not going to highlight everybody, but you'll have people doing end runs around the secretary. they'll go to the hill because they've got their own little relationships with committee chairmen and committees. it's time that they accepted the unanimous, the unanimous belief of people on both sides to have aisle, change the oversight. and i thank the bipartisan policy center for allowing us to publicly exhort, plead, beg, ask, demand. if you want to make america more secure, one of the most important things you can do is create a relationship between the congress of the united states and the new department. listen, it's still a new department. it's still maturing. they still have a lot of work to do. and if you want to make it most effective, then you've got to change your oversight, and you've got to change the committee structures. thank you. >> that is certainly one of the most impassioned advocates --

[laughter] i've ever seen. >> i mean, i guess it's really frustrating for me. i look at the governor and lee, and i say to myself, congress, you asked these men to assemble a committee and tell us what we need to do to make america safer. well, they've done that. they keep saying it publicly. so, congress, i suggest you read the report and do what they recommend you to do. it's not that difficult. [laughter] i'm sorry, guys, i just -- >> ken, would you like to add something? [laughter] >> ditto. thank you very much. [laughter] >> that's not nearly as passionate. >> ditto! [laughter] i'll add a little bit. it's certainly hard to add to that. first, i want to say thank you to the bipartisan center for having me. this is an important event, and it's an honor to be included with these folks up here. just on a unanimity front, my own personal anecdote, i was asked to come out with a number of the folks here today to a

meeting, i guess it was last year out in palm springs about the annenberg and aspen folks to talk about this issue i. and as was said, i'm on about 35 different advisory boards and everything else in the city where, you know, i routinely get together with folks with views from across the spectrum. we talk about things, and there's always some, you know, high level consensus, but when you get down into the granularity, there's real difference of opinion. and that's the beauty of those things, you're able to hash out differences, but come to some common ground. this is the first time i went into a session like that, and it was a two-day session, and we ended up with absolute unanimity -- not anonymity, unanimity -- on every granular point we talked about when it comes to this issue. there was no difference of opinion. we all had different ideas in terms of how it could be effectuated, but it was absolute across the board, and that's unprecedented in my experience. as for this group, i'm the executive branch guy.

spent my whole government career in the executive branch, so usually i'd be the last person in the world to be demanding or asking for comprehensive, effective congressional oversight, right? but, in fact, that's exactly the plea i'm making as an executive branch person because, you know, i came out of the justice department where you have a pretty, pretty simple oversight structure. you've got the judiciary committees, you've got intelligence committees, and it's pretty straight toward. you know -- straight forward. you know who you have to go to. and you knew you had folked like sheldon whitehouse who really knew the issues down to a granular level, and that meant effective oversight. that meant tough questioning and follow through and a deep understanding on the part of the members about our mission, about us as individuals, and that was real oversight. and i don't see that with the dhs situation. and i get it that it's not easy to rectify this problem. you know, we've heard about the

turf issues. there are obviously turf issues up on the hill that my co-panelists can speak to more knowledgeably. but also you just look at the diversity of issues that dhs deals with, everything from border patrol to fema to secret service. they have such a wide range of activities that it's sort of understandable that the oversight, you know, not only pulling together the challenge of pulling together legacy jurisdictions into one or several places, but just the subject matter. they're so diverse, it's hard to to put them all in one place. so we're not trying to diminish the difficulty of this challenge, but we do want to emphasize the need to meet the challenge. just to tick off some of the issues, i mean, it's -- i can tell you firsthand when i was homeland security adviser with the white house, talking with the folks, michael chertoff was there at the time, the difficulty of answering the myriad oversight commands from committees. it was a huge drain on resources. and, you know, i think a couple years ago there were media

reports about how john pistole declined to appear at a subcommittee on aviation because he said the department didn't believe that was the proper committee of oversight. whether it was or wasn't, that was a very telling event. john pistole is the most accommodating, duty calls, salute and go forward kind of guy you'll ever meet in d.c. or thinker in the country. and when he got to the point where he said, look, i cannot appear, i've got to do my day job and you really need to get your shop in order, that was a shot across the bow to congress, and we hope they heard it. so beyond the demand on time, there's also -- and resources -- there's also the diffuse message the executive branch gets from so many different committees of oversight. you're just not, as an agency, getting a clear, direct message from congress as to where you should go. and as i think michael chertoff said, when you hear a lot of voices, you don't hear any voices. and that's true. it really, i think it means, it

has handicapped the department to some extent by not having that clear direction from congress, and that's critical when you've got a relatively new department. and then i think, you know, this, there are also issues of lack of having a champion on capitol hill. it's important when a department can, that a department has one committee or two committees that really are the champion for that department. once again that's particularly important when it comes to an agency like dhs which is still sort of this its adolescence when you think about it. and then the last thing i'd point out is something we heard from the ambassador at the outset. you know, there's legislation that needs to get passed. i mean, we'd like to have authorizing legislation for dhs, but legislation that needs passage right in the wheelhouse of dhs like cyber. and the fact that we don't have, you know, clearer lines of authority on capitol hill dealing with that issue, i think that's led to what has been a real problematic delay this getting cyber legislation which is going to go a long way to

helping us meet what is a very real threat to national security now and in the future. so there are real life implications to this situation. i agree it might not sounder terribly sexy, but it really is fundamentally important we get this right. >> have we convinced you this is a dynamic issue? >> yes. it's clearly dynamic. it's clearly dynamic. well, getting a little bit more granular, what would you, how would you reshape the congressional oversight? i mean, are we talking one committee, two committees? how would it look, and how would you get there? maybe we'll start with tim and move down the line. >> i don't think -- while we have recommended through tom and lee's leadership, the nerve commission, we've -- the 9/11 commission, we've recommended a certain set of changes for the congress. i think, basically, this is going to be congress' decision in the reform process. they set up the rules that would be voted on sometime in january. whether they reduce this to one

or two committees in the house and the senate, they have to reconcile how that would work in their jurisdictional systems. we're not going to at this point prescribe directly where they should remove it. >> what do you think it should look like just personally? >> well, first of all, it should be a lot smaller. it shouldn't be 92, it should be, you know, a handful of committees, ideally down to one or two. it should have a number of people on it that are ec permits -- experts, that develop expertise on homeland security and cyber issues. as all three of us have talked about, the changes are coming at us very, very quickly. people are over in syria as we speak training, radicalizing. mr. comey at the fbi said just a few weeks ago there are scores of people coming back into the united states of america with this radicalization and this bomb-making skill.

what's the dhs role in that, what is the fbi role in this, what is the intelligence community's role. and if congress isn't overseeing this and giving the dhs specific authorities and budget, nobody is overseeing this. so america is vulnerable. we don't have any one committee that has passed legislation, that is telling our new homeland security department exactly what their role should be in this effort to protect the united states of america at this point. so experts, people on the committee that are devoted to this that spend hours and hours every week getting to know these issues and going down to the department of homeland security and having the appropriate oversight hearings, and then the final point i'd headache is this is so -- i'd make is this is so critically important not only in its oversight role, but because

there are so many secret things involved in this, this is not just like the education committee that i sat on where most of your oversight is done publicly and we all know, you know, what reforms, what we're working on, what amendments need to take place to reform our public school system. we talk on department of homeland security and intelligence community about very secret things, very, very sensitive things to our communities at times that have to be protected. and so if we don't have the appropriate people getting to know those issues and doing the architecture that's put together in space or wherever it might be at the nsa, if those people aren't doing their jobs and serving on these committees year to year and knowing what questions to ask, knowing how to hold the executive branch accountable, having tough hearings on them when they overextend privacy issues, then

nobody up there is doing this job. so it is very important that we get going now on it, siob be an. if they vote on a resolution in january with the new membership to take this issue on, that process has to start now including key senators and congressmen that sit on some of these committees that are willing to give up jurisdiction and oversight. and finally, i'd just say tom mentioned the think tanks in town. we've got brookings that has endorsed this on the left, and we've got heritage on the right that has come together and endorsed this concept. if they can do it and the think tank community, why in the world can't our congress do this, republicans and democrats come across the board? there are no excuses for not acting to do this. >> think tanks don't chair committees. [laughter] tom? is. >> a couple things if i might real quick. first of all, to put it in perspective for you, and my successors in interest have

endured the same challenges. while i was secretary, we were conducting two wars in afghanistan and iraq, and i was up on the hill probably a factor of 3x or 4x more often than donald rumsfeld was. frankly, because the committee structure in terms of interacting between the legislative branch and the executive branch had been narrowed down over a period of time. make a general observation, we still have a congress with which i was privileged and honored to serve with a committee structure operating out of the 20th century. the challenges related to the united states federal government in the 21st century -- not just within homeland security, but across the board -- currently for rethinking how the legislative branch exercises its constitutionally-delegated authority and responsibility to oversee the executive branch. so in my -- and i'm just going to focus on homeland security.

i understand there are different jurisdiction cans because of the mull -- jurisdictions because of the multitasking nature of the d.. if i could wave -- department. if i could wave the magic wand, i would probably have no more than two authorizing committees and one primary committee. i would have a couple of select -- i would have a couple subcommittees in the different, it might be clusters of responsibilities. but because of the nature of the overlapping jurisdiction, and, again, the committee structure is archaic. it's antikuwaited, and it's not -- antiquated and it's not terribly effective, and we're not going to go into it. it's antiquated, it's out of date, it's not terribly effective. so i would probably if i could have my way have a couple of those subcommittees. and then where you had overlap aring jurisdiction with jus -- overlapping jurisdiction with justice, somebody from the justice committee outside of dhs

would be a member, be a member of that subcommittee. frankly, it's going to take some thinking about who should serve where. but at the end of the day, you could interlock these other full committee into the subcommittees of the department so you'd have the advantage of that multiple jurisdictional point of view all embedded in the same structure. so if i could have my preference, it would be one fairly large committee, multiple subcommittees. but you made sure that part of those subcommittees and the real committee you had some overlapping jurisdiction so you could have a more comprehensive look at the totality of the possibility of the department. >> and there's a precedent for that with intelligence and armed services and judiciary -- >> correct. >> -- and all across. yeah. ken? what's your wish? >> just to add on to something ambassador roemer said about the

importance of having people on the oversight committees who really are steeped in the subject matter of what you do. keep in mind what oversight is, at least from the perspective of the executive branch. it's committees and members who though how to ask is the right questions and follow up to get to the soft spots of your operations and find out where there are issues and where things can be improved. and you can't just do that as a member with talking points that are drafted by a staff member. you have to be immersed in the substance of what it is that agency does. and i can tell you, you know, and i mentioned sheldon whitehouse just because i dealt a lot with him when i was in the justice department especially about surveillance matters. he knew that area chapter ask verse. so when he asked a question in a hearing, i knew i was going to get a follow-on question that found whatever issue i didn't address in my question. same thing when i got questions for the record or written questions from them. and and so you had to prepare

and respond very differently to somebody like him than you did to somebody who would be part-time oversight person who really doesn't spend a lot of time in your world. because that person's just knot going to know -- not going to know no ask those follow-on questions. it's asking the tough questions to help agencies improve. and if you don't have the knowledge because you're not doing it day in and day out, you're not going to know to ask the right questions. >> so given the difficulty that congress has had organizing itself just to pass legislation, are we surprised that it hasn't embraced measures that would also require busting through turf? and is it realistic to expect that it could happen, say, on the time frame that you outline, tim? >> look, sioban, i mean, it is absolutely realistic to ask the people that represent our american people to do their

jobs, to reorganize, to to be a network fighting a network of terrorists. we don't need these massive bureaucracies here in the united states overseeing, you know, the committee structure overseeing a terrorist group, a cell of people that can get into our country that are coming into our country as we speak. we know from what i said before that terrorists have gone to syria where there's an incubator training these folks to learn new bomb skills, to target the united states of america. we know they're targeting the aviation system here. they're coming here. some of them are here. and congress, does it take -- what does it take for them to then realize we shouldn't have 92 different committees overseeing this threat of a few dozen people coming into this country.

there's no excuse for this, there really isn't. and what a shame it would be iff the next 9/11 type of commission writes a report that says, okay, ten years ago we saw the failures in the executive branch and in our intelligence agencies. today it's the failure of congress that resulted in scores of people. hart-rudman warned about that 15 year ago, the 9/11 commission has washed about that -- has warned about that. what does it take? so, yes, it is realistic. and as tom said earlier, it's realistic to expect our democrats and republicans to work together on national security issues to protect our country. it may not be realistic for us to think that they're going to come up with a bill on, you know, agree on an abortion issue or agree on, you know, the definition of marriage, but it is realistic to expect them to do this kind of job. so we, we're hopeful that members on the house and the

senate side will start to meet in august and september, maybe talk about their ideas for condensing the oversight, share their ideas with different committee heads. they'll come up with some plans, maybe that's circulated sometime in the fall, and then new members would vote on it in january, and maybe there's a way to hold new members accountable on something like this. it's a national security vote. it's not just simply a vote about how congress is organized. >> ken, what do you see as the role of the executive branch in sort of pushing ahead on this issue? >> yeah. i think as i've tried to articulate, the executive branch has a strong interest in having a rationalized oversight program, and there are, you know, i know jeh johnson, his folks are spending a lot of time at hearings that they think are probably duplicative and probably are not necessary, and they would love to do something about it. i think it is incumbent on the

administration to make this a priority, to use the bully pulpit to push congress. because the leadership of congress has to embrace it. unless the leaders in congress recognize publicly that this is an important issue, it's not going to happen because they've got, they're going to have some people pushing back real hard. so it's got to be a public effort. they've got to be armed in turn with push from the president and the white house to say this is really important. so i'd like to see, you know, the whole national security apparatus from the nsc, president of the nsc on down making this a top priority in all the conversations with congress. >> tom, you had mentioned the role of the congressional leadership in pushing this ahead. what should they be doing? >> well, it is a, i think my colleagues have brought up two very important points. one, it is a national security issue. it is a national security issue. i don't think anyone would argue that the restructuring of

congress right after world war ii and subsequent restructuring from the department of war to the department of defense has provided more aggressive and more effective oversight of dod, regard he is of the political side of the aisle you're on. that needs to be understood. this is not a management and organizational issue, this is a national security issue, number one. number two, no one is arguing -- from my perspective -- with the executive branch about the need for oversight. we would just, we all believe that the oversight should be comprehensive and would be a lot more effective if the prism was narrowed and you developed some subject matter experts who could help the maturation and development of this fledgling new d. and -- new department. and finally, writ large, i would wager that if you took a private poll of 535 members of congress and asked them in their heart of hearts if they truly believed

that the committee structure vis-a-vis the executive branch was as effective as it needs to be or should be in the 21st century given the range of issues and the size of the government, i, i have to believe most would say, no, it's not. we're just kind of going along to get along because that's the way it's been. and so we're here saying if you want to begin to make changes in a 21st century infrastructure overseeing a 21st century government that is far more complicated and complex with regard to the threats and the challenges, then you need to think about your committee structure. we're just simply saying to the leaders it's a national security issue. deal with it in an effective way, and that is changing the swrurs diction. i like that notion, tim. it's not a vote on reorganization, it's a vote on national security. republicans and democrats, we're all strong on national security.

but you kind of wonder whether or not why they find it incapable or unwilling to do this. it's going to call for the leadership. the white house and the leaders this both chambers and in both parties. >> and i just want to take a moment here to not refine a point because tom's made it much better than i could ever make it. his eloquence really, i think, drives home the point. when we look at the department of defense and our special forces, army, navy, marines, coast guard, all the special programs in defense, and we have armed services and defense appropriations and a handful of committees overseeing what, tom, roughly a $500 billion budget? >> absolutely. >> and then we have the department of homeland security with a 60, 70, $80 billion budget. >> now. i wish i'd have had it. >> you didn't have that, now it's gone up to that with 92 committees overseeing it. so you're telling me the department of homeland security

should have eight times the number of subcommittees and full committees when we're both dealing with the national security of the united states? and furthermore, the department of homeland security is dealing now issues of radicalization, people coming into the country but also maybe some that are already here that are home grown terrorists. something in effect of what happened in the boston marathon bombing. they have a specific lane to help protect us from those lone wolves. yet congress doesn't really know what's going on because there are so many people up there that are fighting for jurisdiction and oversight. that has to change. >> ken, you had talked some about the costs of all of this sort of excessive oversight. i was wondering if you could sort of rate the quality of the oversight of homeland security at this point. >> report card? >> yeah a report card. the commission didn't do a

report card this time around, so we'll leave that up to you. >> there we go. i'll look at it by comparison. i think the oversight of the justice department the time i was there, 18, 19 years, and spent time working with congress, judiciary and intel committees. there was vibrant, strong, it was aggressive where it should be and it was knowledgeable. and i think you don't see that when its to dhs. i was dealing with it when i was homeland security adviser, and it was not any of those things. and not because there weren't good people up there, not because there weren't people who cared a lot, but it was a part-time occupation, and it was not the focus of the staff, the exclusive focus of the staffs or the members. and that's an important point, by the way, the knowledge not only of the members, but the staffs up there as well. and as a result, really it's sort of the watered down oversight you get which is not probing. and, i mean, i think we've all been there. all of us who have been up there

to testify know that you can give sort of a standard answer to some questions without worrying about the follow-up. and that's, it might just be that particular exchange, but that also sort of typifieses the whole relationship. if you don't have somebody who's really on the case on congress' side, you know that, you know, you're not going to really get asked the tough questions, so we don't have to worry that much about this oversight. and these are people, jeh johnson, he's got a few balls in the air right now. john pistole's got a few balls in the area, and unless that ball makes itself seem really important in the eyes of that principal, that official, that oversight's going to get short shrift. so i think there is a real cost both to the oversight service that the congress is providing the american people, but to the quality of the intraspection that agencies are forced to do by that oversight. >> tom, how how would you rate ?

>> sorry? >> rate the quality of oversight of homeland security by congress at this point. >> i think they confuse quantity with quality. i think the point my colleagues have made, i think, is a legitimate one. listen, there's a lot of really talented people up on the hill on both sides of the aisle, and i do believe that my colleagues with whom i served and those with whom i'm serving now to a certain extent would rather develop very specific subject matter expertise and trying trye all things to all people when you're going to multiple committees and multiple subcommittees. and i think at the end of the day while i anytime that homeland security is one of those agencies that's multitasked, it is a border-centric agency. you worry about goods and people going back and forth across the border. you also worry about immigration. you also worry about natural disasters. you also worry about cybersecurity. you better be worried about critical infrastructure. you're certainly worried about

an ongoing terrorist threat. but, you know, they're all related to the border. there's an epicenter of focus that i think lends itself to the aggregation of all the right groups within that department. but when you suddenly i my diffuse the oversight across multiple jurisdictions, you lose a is sense of both urgency, and to my colleagues' point be of view, the notion that on a day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year basis you begin to develop the expertise to can those tough follow-on questions. that only comes from experience, and you don't want to turn it over to a staff member. i'm speaking respectfully of the staff, but the points you made. you need aggressive oversight. and the extv branch -- executive branch welcomes it, the constitution requires it, at least demands it, suggests it, but you don't get that. so i think, again, at the end of the day writ large oversight of the executive branch is

antiquated. we're here only talking about homeland security, but i think congress in the aftermath of 9/11 confused quantity with quality. it's turf, it's tough to get people to give up jurisdiction. but my god, there's plenty of jurisdiction in a lot of other areas to make committee chairmen happy. although that should not be the function of leadership, to make committee chairmen happy. it should be to construct the oversight capability to make sure your country's safer and more e fetive. effective. >> tim, your assessment, quality of oversight of homeland security. >> i would agree with the criticisms and the evaluation that both my colleagues have made. as a former member of congress and someone who loves the constitution of congress and deeply respects the first branch, one of my dreams as a fifth grader growing up in indiana was to someday run for congress and represent my hometown community in this

wonderful city. and having lived abroad to represent our country to a billion people in india, i'm so proud of our country. it is an exceptional place. and yet when we look down the road and we think about what their jobs are to make some not even that difficult decision to give up some turf and to serve on one less subcommittee or full committee and move from serving on six to five or four to three for our national secure, that should not be a tough call. and so i think our oversight when that doesn't happen suffers. our security suffers. our safety as a country suffers because they are not acting on these things. and our report, sioban, goes into many other areas that congress needs to act on in addition to the oversight and

the reorganization of oversight of the department of homeland security. we talk about, you know, developing a new authority as to how we send our troops, our men and women to war and updating the 2001 resolution. so that that decision reflects the american people's interests and their opinions. we talk about congress passing a cybersecurity bill that will better protect the country. there are many things we talk about that congress should be doing, be they're not. and i -- and they're not. i think what we and the 9/11 commission decided was we are past frustration on this, especially when it's a national security issue. congress must do something and do it soon. >> one of the other areas that the report covers on the congressional front is an area where there may not be enough

congressional oversight. and, ken, you alluded to your experiences working with the intelligence committees. and i was struck when i was talking with congressman hamilton a couple days ago, and he said that, you know, having seen the fallout of the snowden revelations, he's concluded that congressional oversight of these surveillance programs has not been robust enough, and i just was curious what your sense of that is. >> that's, i mean, that's mr. snowden's disclosures, and you have to look at the fundamental tension, the fundamental problem which points up which is this, that the intelligence committees are tasked with a very difficult job. they're tasked with being the ones who day i to day look at these -- day-to-day look at these highly classified programs, assess those programs

and do so without those programs being disclosed to the rest of the world. so if you look at some of the programs that have been very controversial in the wake of the snowden disclosures like the telephone metadata program where all the telephone metadata was gathered and put in one place, held by the government and then searched for indications of terrorist activity, that's the one that's really caught the most controversy, and that's -- it was completely classified. so you had the members of the intelligence committee being briefed about this on a regular basis. in fact, i guess all of congress was allowed to be briefed on it, but intelligence committees themselves sort of focused on it but not able the talk about it more broadly. and i think senator wyden sort of raised that concern before the leaks came out. and that's a problem. there's no way around it, frankly, because, you know, there are large parts of our surveillance -- if not most of our surveillance activities -- need to be done in total secret. they can't be disclosed publicly.

but it does raise a concern how does the public have confidence that that oversight is being conducted effectively when they can't see what that oversight is? they can't see whether the tough questions are being asked. they can't see whether congress in the body of the intelligence committees are asking about, hmm, how are we sl -- calibrating this balance between liberty and privacy? i mean, between security and pryce. i think that's a tension that's always going to be there. i will say though i think one of the lessons of this whole post-snowden situation is that it's incumbent on the executive branch to disclose more if they can when there's a program that can be disclosed in part to do so and not have what i think is a reflexive action on the part of us in the intelligence community that, boy, we need to be careful not to disclose anything. if you let one piece of

information come out, that might be a sliply slope. it's a -- slippery slope. the more the public can know about these programs, the more basis they have that they have confidence that it's being done appropriately. in the absence of that knowledge, there's an absence of that confidence, an absence of and then i think there's doubt about the oversight. >> tim, having sat on the intelligence committee, do you agree with congressman hamilton that it's not be robust enough, the intelligence oversight? >> >> i always agree with congressman hamilton. he's always got that wisdom and insight. i always associate myself with the gentleman from our home state of indiana. when we talk about oversight, we're talking about, you know, condensing, reforming, streamlining on the department of homeland security the oversight in congress. it's a very different issue on the intelligence committee. one, it is finding members --

this is called a select committee. it's not called a select committee because, hopefully, members select it. it's hopefully called a select committee because the leadership goes andics specific people -- goes and picks specific people that they know have an expertise in national security that are going to devote significant time before committee hearings and after committee hearings, that these people are going to travel not just to langley or to the farm or, you know, nationally, but internationally to visit our chiefs of station and see what issues they're dealing with overseas. these people are going to serve on these committees and develop a sense of expertise and devotion to issues. as ken has said, they are going to penetrate and ask tough issues -- tough questions about issues. why is there this problem with overbudging on this particular

set of -- overbudgetting on this particular set of systems we're buying for space as a hypothetical? why is that happening? who do we get up here to have accountable answers given? how do we do staff work to make sure that the right questions are asked and followed up with after we have a secret hearing? and i don't get the sense today that that kind of thoroughness is taking place by all members of the senate and the house committees. and i would further say -- >> enough of the members of the house and -- >> i would like to see more members participate in that kind of dedicated fashion. and that's, again, why you can't have six or seven different committees that you think you're serving on. if you're truly serving on a committee, you're going to be on probably two or three or four to devote the time necessary to travel, to studying the issues, to oversight. and i would say, you know, lee

and i have talked about this. we both served on the intelligence committee. it's not only a function of what we've just talked about, getting the right people, bipartisan staff working on these issues together, but it's also, you know, terribly important that the executive branch briefs all members of the committee. and they don't keep narrowing down the briefings to the gang of eight, to the gang of four, to the gang of two. and members on these intelligence committees -- which you're supposed to be selected, you know, 25 members out of 435 or a dozen or 15 from the senate of 100, they're picked because there's confidence in these people that they represent the entire body with very, very top secret kinds of information. >> do you feel they're currently representing the entire body? >> lee, do you want to answer that question? we'll bring you in on that one. >> [inaudible]

[laughter] >> feel free to weigh in. we're ant to go to q -- about to go to q&a anyway. >> i think in both the department of homeland security side and on the intelligence committee we need to vastly improve our intelligence oversight capabilities. and change 'em. >> i just want to make a quick comment here on behalf of the department which i was privileged to help form and lead. homeland security does not generate its own intelligence, folks. they can be held accountable for intelligence failures, and they have been blamed from time to time when those things have happened. but they rely on all the alphabet agencies to get them the information that they either act upon or disseminate. i just wanted to make that known to everybody in this. this notion that somehow the secretaries have, their private -- they have a little bit of competitive intelligence

capability, but by and large, they still have to rely on the alphabet agencies in order to make decisions in terms of disseminating information or acting on relevant and timely information. i just throw that out there as an anecdote. i think i could make a pretty strong case begin the nature of, again, the world we live in, 20th century structure not good for a 21st century world or a 21st century set of challenges. we're a much larger government. the argument could be made that the select committees on intelligence might be the only committee you sit on. or your burden to serve on other committees could be substantially reduced. that's the nature of the world we live on. and there's probably -- everybody could argue about there being important jurisdictions, but one could argue that if you accept a committee assignment on the intelligence committee, perhaps that ought to be your reason for existence for the four or six years you're on it. just a thought. >> interesting. >> and i just keep going back.

20th century government, 21st century oversight, 21st century government, much bigger government, more complexity and challenges, and we still have jurisdiction the same way. doesn't make any sense. >> let's open it up to questions. yeah. >> how you doing? my name's abraham scott -- [inaudible] pentagon on 9/11. i, this question not directly related to the oversight, but i do believe oversight and transparency go hand in hand. haven't been, having worked in the army intelligence for three years, i think we tend to loosely use national security to classify documentation when they shouldn't be classified. a perfect example, 9/11.

we've had a number of documents classified which cause the family members not to get a complete picture of what happened on 9/11. i would just like to ask congressman ambassador tim roemer from the 9/11 commission how would you rate the classification of the documents during 9/11? i also ask the two gentlemen from homeland security how would you rate the transparency of homeland security? thank you. >> abe, thanks for your question, and nice to see you here, and thank you for all your great work not only helping on the 9/11 commission, but on the pentagon memorial for 9/11 too. i think you bring up some great points. first of all, i think one of our recommendations do -- i know one of our recommendations in the report today is about transparency and encouraging the

national archives and the executive branch to release more and more of the documents from 9/11, to have this transparency and this openness so that the american people have even more access to what we found and what -- why we made the recommendations we did. and so we make a very, very strong set of recommendations here to change that process and open up the system. secondly, overclassification, we also have seen that there is a tendency in our government to overclassify all kinds of different information. and that really hurts us in many ways. when we talk about sharing information, we talk about sharing information across government horizontally between the federal government and the departments and breaking down the silos, but also vertically to local and state officials and making sure that they get information and that they pass

it back up to the federal government. and when we overclassify information, when we say it's top secret and it probably isn't, then those local authorities often times, you know, could not -- maybe they don't get access to a critical clue or something that they could pick up. i think that's improving, but i know in our recommendations that we continue to recommend changes there. thanks, abe. >> yeah. i think it's really a very important question. in spite of what happened on 9/11, you still have an institutional bias based upon a cold war mentality on we'll distribute information on a need-to-know basis. and by and large, a lot of these entities, in my judgment, have decided that you don't need to know until we're ready to tell you which is not exactly the barometer that i think is appropriate. i think overclassification is a way to shield information. it's a reason not to to share

it. and even in my time in government, and i would defer to my colleagues, i've seen secret or top secret on documents that if it was redacted in a certain kind of way, the information could have been shared to your point with regard to transparency withoutdivulging sources and meds. so again we're looking, the whole overclassification, i think, is critically important going forward. secondly, i would say this. there's a word that's missing in this conversation between the federal government and the rest of the country, the word's trust. and even if you have secret and top secret information, it is beyond belief that somehow we can't figure out a way to share that with east the governors -- with either the governors or the homeland security advisers or other people out there on the ground. because you can't secure the country from inside the beltway. and unless we're willing to share more of this information even if it's secret or top secret and trust people who get

it that they won't leak it and not necessarily act upon it, we will never maximize our ability to defend ourselves. and so i just want to inject one more word into this conversation. let's look at the classification system. we ought to look at that, but don't use it to withhold information. and don't with so reluctant to share even that kind of that information. and i don't want to hear about leaks. there's no town that leaks more than washington d.c. so don't tell me you're worried about people out there who have day to to day responsibility for the -- day-to-day responsibility for the safety and the tutor of their friends. the folks in this town have to be a lot more trusting that people who wear the same uniform of public service whether it's in the law enforcement commitment, homeland security out there, we've got to start trusting if we're going to take advantage of all the intention we have to put in a position where we can be preemptive

rather than reactive. >> did you have something you want to add? >> i think that's an excellent question, and thank you for that question. i think if there's one thing, one issue that's less sexy that congressional oversight -- [laughter] it's overclassification. [laughter] >> we're going to coffer them all here. >> we found the only less sexy -- [laughter] one of the things that sioban prattled off is i'm on the public interest declassification board which is devoted to addressing this issue. we can consider ourselves sexy, but it's not a very sexy topic. and it's a fundamental problem. and the problem really is one of human nature. when you're writing a document, you're in the executive branch, you have concerns about whether it might have some information that could be, whose release can be damaging to the national security, people tend to err on the side of classifying. and so it really requires a comprehensive sort of, you know,

all-out effort by the executive branch. mainly the executive branch to push back against that human nature. and the president, you know, when he came in, he issued an executive order addressing this issue. there's been a lot of talk about it, but it's a tough nut to crack. and i think as much as we can generate public discussion of this issue of the need for making sure there's not overclassification, the better. you're going to need to get a groundswell to really push back against what i said is really a function of human nature. >> quick observation. i think we need to go from need to know, that's cold war stuff, to need to share. it's a different world. >> and we'll go to commissioner -- [inaudible] but i wanted to, one thing that governor kaine mentioned to me a couple days ago when we were talking about this report, and he mentioned there are lot of, that commissions, documents and papers still remain classified including a chunk of their

report on the national security agency which people may find interesting today. and he said he didn't believe that any of them needed to be classified today. [inaudible conversations] >> so this has been an extraordinarily articulate discussion by my pals here on the dais of the myriad reasons why we need to reorganize and reform congress. ten years ago we said when we made our recommendation that it would probably be the hardest of all our recommendations to realize, and we were right, and we're not being smug about being right here, we're being unhappy about how right we were. so the question i have, and i'll direct it first to governor

ridge, in your extraordinarily candid ask and around the tick tick -- articulate exposition of why turf is the primary reason for the resistance to sensible reorganization and reform, the homeland security issues, the national security component to why we are not only wasteful, but aredown productive in the current regime, can you unpack what it means for there to be a turf issue that seems to be resistant to reform and how we as citizens can force accountability for the refusal to accept these relations which we have -- these recommendations

which we have head and reiterated and reiterated again with support from all of the different avenues you've talked about over these past ten years? >> i did not articulate it as well as you just did. thank you, ben, for the kind words. when i think in terms of turf, i think in terms of almost an historical inertia up on the hill over decades. there's been our committee, and we've always had jurisdiction over these issues, and we just have a natural instinct to preserve it. i don't think the institutions of government are any different than the institutions of the private sector, maybe institutions of us personally. change is difficult. change is very difficult particularly when it's a fundamental change in your life, your company and now in the committee structure. having said that, that explains

it, it doesn't justify it. and i think at the point in time you'll probably finish i just doubt very seriously if you'll ever have too many chairmen regardless of party affiliation, regardless of the chamber who are willing to surrender jurisdiction that they've had literally for years, if not decades. so it's at that point in time, and i think this is where maybe you're going with the question, how do you activate the political, how do you activate the body politic to effect the change, and we want them to be responsive. i can't think of anything better than what we're doing now in these multiple agencies and groups and think tanks that continue to put pressure on the congress of the united states. but ultimately, i think it comes down to five people, maybe four. the leaders in the house and the senate on both parties. at the caucus level. ladies and gentlemen, we've met. we are in bipartisan agreement. it's a national security issue.

we are going to effect a change. easier said than done, but i'm not even sure you have to get a consensus among 535 people. i think it's about a leadership issue. that's the way i see it, because i just don't -- i think as i said earlier on, i think most, most men and women in the house and senate would tell you -- well, they respect the committee structure. i can't believe they feel fulfilled given the level of their engagement that is spread across multiple committees and jurisdictions, that they're actually doing their job as an effective way as they'd like to do it. so i think you need really little support from the white house, but there are four people that need to affect these changes post-november, before january. >> [inaudible] tom, the -- is there a fundraising component? we know how much time is spent

on fundraising in the congress by individual members. it's a constant demand on their time and energy. and is there a fundraising component that is associated with a failure to reorganize and streamline oversight on homeland security? and let me add a second question coming from the families of 9/11 victims, and that is whether in your view the 9/11 families could again be active to appointments for change -- proponents for change on the congress if they were to organize and, again, rededicate their efforts to this issue? >> a couple quick, short answers. one, i do not think i understand where you're come with regard to

the fundraising. i don't think that would have any effect. i do think galvanizing the 9/11 families around this very important issue would have far greater and better effect. i like that a lot. >> yep, yep. >> i don't think there's any question about that. >> richard, if i could answer both your questions, i think there is a fundraising effect because of the bandwidth on almost everything that happens up there. and if a member out of a 24-hour day is spending six hours a day fundraising and two hours a day in oversight hearings, is that the right ratio that we need to protect our country today? it'd be interesting for some of the media to do a survey of members of congress. how much time do you spend in your committees not just in a markup of a bill when you have to be there and your votes are recorded on amendments and final passage of a bill, how many hours are you in that committee when they're doing the oversight

of how the d. of homeland security is working these days and what problems their encountering? do you have three members of that oversight committee in that hearing for the entire time, do you have 20? that'd be very interesting to look at that. but let me go back to your first question now. i think three things need to happen for this to pass. and i think it's possible. it's hard, but it's not impossible. first of all, it needs to be defined as a national security issue. it's not a reorganization of congress issue, it's not about solely turf, it's about what do we do to try to make sure that our committee's structure is appropriately aligned with the threat and with the solutions in america today? and 92 subcommittees and committees does not do it. way too many. it's wasteful. the second thing that needs to

happen, i think, is third party involvement. i think the 9/11 family members should be involved. annenberg should be involved. there should be groups that reach out to the leadership and tell the leadership in our congress -- ms. pelosi, mr. boehner, mr. reid, mr. mcconnell -- we want this to happen for national security reasons. i think tom's right that, you know, it needs to be focused on the leadership. but if the leadership is hearing from other members in the senate and the house that they would give up jurisdiction, they'd give up one subcommittee and they tell their leadership that they're willing to do that, this may happen. this has a better chance. and lastly, i would say the great thing about our system in america is when the people weigh in. not just the third party interest groups, but the people. c-span view yores. and if -- viewers.

and if they call and say we're not going to take this anymore, we want congress to do its job. we're not going to reelect 90 or 95 percent of the congresswomen and men if they're not doing national security issues and they do their call-ins and they weigh in, that's probably -- if they'll do that, then i think you could even see a bigger chance for this change. >> well, those are great thoughts to end on, and thank you -- >> thank you very much. >> i'm sorry, we've run out of time. >> i'm very sorry, we will be happy to take your question offline. we do have to move on hostly because many of you are probably very hungry. i just want to make a few comments -- >> [inaudible] >> understood. i apologize. i'd be happy to talk to you offline, so i do have to -- >> [inaudible] >> number two, we'd be happy to talk to you -- okay.

well, maybe -- i didn't know you were a family member until you showed me the sign, so we'll be happy to talk to you offline. >> i appreciate your patience. i understand that not everyone's getting an opportunity to speak. thank you, richard, for volunteering all of us 9/11 family members for a new job. i would say i think we'll probably all happy to participate alongside our 9/11 commissioner friends. >> [inaudible] >> that said, i wanted to recognize just a few people in the audience who have made all of this possible. first of all, i want to recognize jerry man onof carnegie corporation and the support for the homeland security project. without her we would not have this project, and we're very grateful for all of her support. and i'd be remiss if i didn't talk about the people who made today and this report possible. in the room we have jacob clark, ashley mccormack, jonathan you went, we have jessica -- [inaudible] we thank you all for all of your hard work. the homeland security program summer fellow, michael garcia,

has been invaluable throughout this process. thank you very much. and, of course, i have to thank ashley, our bpc director of communications, and her incredible team, alyssa lloyd who put this team together, abby brandon who has been communicating with the press to make sure you all knew about this and lindsay who put together this report and made it possible to be in front of you. at this point i'm happy to break for lunch. it is directly behind me. we have doors over here and over here, and we're going to be coming back together in about 25 minutes to begin our next part of our program. thank you all. ♪ [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> the leaders of the house and senate committees that oversee veterans' issueses have reached an agreement to address plans at the v.a. you can watch their news conference in its entirety online at c-span.org. here's some of what they told reporters. >> this will make certain that we address the immediate crisis of veterans being forced on to long waiting lines for health care. it strengthens the v.a. so that it'll be able to hire the doctors, nurses and other medical personnel it needs so that we can put a permanent end to long waiting lists. it addresses the very serious

problems of accountability and makes certain that dishonest and incompetent senior officials at the v.a. do not remain employed there. and in addition, it provides some other significant benefits for veterans and their families. funding for veterans' needs must be considered a cost of war. and appropriated as emerging spending. emergency spending. planes and tanks and guns are a cost of war, so is taking care of the men and women who use those weapons and who fight our battles. this was the funding mechanism contained in the sanders-mccain bill which passed the senate with 93 votes, and it is the funding mechanism in this bill. sufficient sums of money must be provided so that the v.a. has the resources to immediately end unacceptably long waiting periods in many v.a. facilities throughout the country. this bill does that by

contracting out with private medical providers and community health centers, department of defense facilities, etc., and this is something that was contained in the house bill. and we basically accept that language. december agreement consistent -- disagreement consistent with the sanders-mccain bill allows veterans who live 40 miles or more from the v.a. facility to get their health care outside hofstra, and i think what we appreciate if you live 100 miles away and you're sick, you should be able to go to a provider in your community. this bill in terms of dollars provides some $10 billion for contracting out of health care and for those veterans who live 40 mile or more away, $10 billion. acting v.a. secretary sloan gibson and many of the veterans' organizations have made it clear that we need to make sure the v.a. has the doctors, the nurses, the medical personnel, the space they need. this bill provides $5 billion for the v.a. to strengthen their capabilities.

this legislation consistent with bills passed in the house i think unanimously and in the senate is part of sanders-mccain, authorizes funding for the v.a. to enter into 27 interinto leases at 27 major facilities in 18 states and puerto rico. that will cost about a billion and a half dollars. we have all been outraged by the data and so forth. this bill contains language which will allow the secretary to fire people immediately who are doing, who are underperforming or lying. it gives them a 21-day period of appeal without pay during that period. this bill also contains some other provisions included in sanders-mccain. it improves deliver i of care -- delivery of care to veterans who experience sexual trauma while serving in the military. it expands the john david price

scholarship program to include surviving spouses of members of the armed forces who died in the line of duty, and it lets all veterans qualify for in-state tuition under the post-9/11 g.i. bill, and it also extends the program regarding tbi. in terms of money, this bill will provide $17 billion into v.a. health care. there's a $5 billion offset within the v.a., approximately $12 billion of new money. >> secretary of state john curry released the annual -- john kerry released the annual report on religious freedom monday noting that sectarian violence is displacing families around the world. in the his opening remarks, he talked about a sustainable ceasefire that allows for negotiations is the only way the conflict will be resolved. this is 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations]

>> good morning, everybody. how are you? >> good morning. >> everybody good? so i'm going to make, david, i want you out here with me, if you would. tom, i want you to come out here on the other side. thank you, sir. i'm going to make a statement, and then i need to rush out of here because i have a phone call, literally, in about ten minutes. and i'll leave tom malinowski and david here with you. david is a nominee and, therefore, not going to be able to say anything at this point in time, but i wanted to have a chance to introduce him to all of you. as we release the international religious freedom report which we belief is a very important statement that underscores a major challenge around the world, it is also a pleasure for me to introduce president obama's nominee to serve as our

ambassador at large more international religious -- for international religious freedom. and he, when confirmed and if confirmed by the united states senate, is going to lead our efforts to make progress on these issues of religious freedom across the globe, and that is rabbi david sepperstein. i just want to say a very few words quickly about the events in gaza and what is happening and what we're trying to do. as you all know, i just returned from the middle east and from paris where i had a series of discussions aimed at deescalating the conflict, ending the rocket and tunnel attacks against israeli civilians and easing the suffering of innocent people everywhere in gaza, in israel, in the west bank.

today we are continuing to work toward establishing an unconditional humanitarian ceasefire, one that could honor ead which gips now and -- which begins now and will stop the fighting, allow desperately needed food and medicine and other supplies into gaza and enable israel to address the threat which we fully understand and which is peal, the threat posed by tunnel attacks. and to be able to do so without having to resort to combat. that is what could come from a ceasefire. we believe the momentum generated by a humanitarian ceasefire is the best way to be able to begin to negotiate and find out if you can put in place a sustainable ceasefire, one

that addresses all of the concerns, the long-term concerns as well, begin to talk about the underlying conflict in gaza though those obviously will not be all resolved in the context of a ceasefire, sustainable ceasefire discussion. but it is important to try to build, to begin and to move in a process. and that's what we're trying to achieve. that is the only way, ultimately, this conflict is going to be resolved. hopefully, if we can make some progress, the people in this region who deserve peace can take one step towards that elusive goal by stop toking the violence which catches innocents on all sides in the cross fire and given to try to build -- and begin to try to build a sustainable way forward. we also believe that any process

to resolve the crisis this gaza in a lasting and meaningful way must lead to the disarmament of hamas and all terrorist groups. and we will work closely with israel and regional partners and the international community in support of this goal. so we continue to have these discussions. our discussions over there succeeded in putting a 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire in place. then as the rollover time for that occurred, regrettably, there were misunderstandings about the 12 hours versus 24, 4 hours versus 24, and so we're trying to work hard to see if these issues can be clarified in a way that allow the party, that allow israel, the palestinian authority, the palestinian factions, the other countries involved working through the

egyptian initiative to be able to find a way to silence the weapons long enough to be to able to begin to negotiate. now, the cause of peace and understanding is what brings us here today. six teach years ago i -- sixteen years ago i was very proud to join my colleagues in the united states congress in passing the international religious freedom act. the law that mandates this annual state department report in order to shine the light on the obstacles that so many people face as they seek nothing more than the ability to be able to worship as they wish. and the are release of this report -- the release of this report here today is a demonstration of the abiding commitment of the american people and the entire u.s. government to the advancement of freedom of religion worldwide. freedom of religion is at the

core of who we are as americans. it's been at the center of our very identity since the pilgrims fled religious persecution and landed in my home state of massachusetts, and many settled in the city of salem which takes its name from the words salam, shalom meaning peace. but we're reminded that before long even there, even there in salem newly-founded in order to get away from religious strife, unfortunately, religious persecution arrived on the scene. women were accused of witchcraft, and some were burned at the stake. emerging differences between religious leaders in massachusetts and some congregations were led as a result of that to break away and to found new settlements. rhode island was founded by

people who wandered through the woods leaving massachusetts until they broke out on this expanse of water, and they named it providence for obvious reasons. one hundred years after the pilgrims set sail for religious freedom, a catholic woman was executed on the boston commons for the crime of praying her rosary. so we approach this issue, i certainly do, very mindful of our past and of how as americans we have at times had to push and work and struggle to live up fully to the promise of our own founding. john winthrop, born in england, but his passion a nate faith and his disagreements -- passionate faith and his disagreements with the anglican church inspired him to lead a ship full of religious dissidents to come to america.

and on the deck of the ship he famously said in a sermon before they landed, for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. and they have been ever since then. and they are today. and though we are obviously far from perfect and we know that, no place has ever welcomed so many different faiths to worship as freely as here in the united states of america. it's something that we are extraordinarily proud of. but freedom of religion is not an american invention, the it's a universal -- it's a universal value, and it's enshrined in our constitution, and it's ingrained in every human heart. the freedom to profess and practice one's faith is the birthright of every human being. and that's what we believe. these rights are properly

recognized under international law. the promotion of international religious freedom is a priority for president obama, and it is a priority for me as secretary of state. i am making certain and i will continue to that religious freedom remains an integral part of our global diplomatic engagement. the release of this report is an important part of those efforts. this report is a clear-eyed, objective look at the state of religious freedom around the world. and when necessary, yes, it does directly shine a light in a way that makes some countries -- even some of our friends -- uncomfortable. but it does so in order to try to make progress. today of all days we acknowledge a basic truth; religious freedom is human freedom, and that's why i'm especially proud to be joined today by president obama's newly-minted nominee as

our next ambassador at large for international religious freedom, rabbi david sapperstein. when it comes to the work of protecting religious freedom, it is safe to say that david represents the gold standard. think about the progress of the last 20 years in elevating this fight, and david has been at lead every step of the way. serving as the first chair of the u.s. international religious freedom commission, director of the religious, the religious action center for reformed judaism, and as a member of the white house council on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships. but david's resumé is not just a list of titles or positions. that's why he pushed for the u.s. government to engage in partnerships with communities that work across faith lines. that's why he's worked to forge

deeper partnerships with women, faith networks to advance peace and development. and that's why he's worked to engage american-muslim communities and their groups on global muslim engagement affairs. and that's why he made it his mission to promote kohl answer and mutual -- promote tolerance and mutual understanding in sudan. i have witnessed his exceptional skill, his patience, his ability to listen, his sense of humor and his tenacity as an advocate over the course of my years on capitol hill. he is simply one of america's most compelling and committed voices on religion in public life. and i could not be more grateful for his willingness to now serve on the front lines of our global push to expand religious freedom, and i look forward -- i hope -- to his rapid confirmation by the united states senate. one thing is for sure, rabbi

sappersteven is joining an important effort at a very important time. when countries undermine or attack religious freedom, they not only unjustly threaten the people that they target, they also threaten a country's own stability. .. witnesses who are conscientious

objectors to military service. i want to emphasize: this effort isn't about naming countries to lists in order to make us feel somehow that we've spoken the truth. i want our cpc designations to be grounded in plans, action that help to change the reality on the ground and actually help people. that's why we are committed to working with governments as partners to help them ensure full respect for the human rights of all of their citizens. and when 75% of the world's population still lives in countries that don't respect religious freedoms, let me tell you, we have a long journey ahead of us. we have a long way to go when governments kill, detain, or torture people based on a religious belief. north korea stands out again in this year's report for its

absolute and brutal repression of religious activity. members of religious minorities are ripped from their families and isolated in political prison camps. they're arrested and beaten, tortured, and killed. and we've seen reports that individuals have been arrested for doing nothing more than carrying a bible. and north korea is not alone. earlier this month, chinese officials sentenced christian pastor zhang shaojie to 12 years in prison for peaceful advocacy on behalf of his church community. and just last week, i welcomed the release of meriam ishag, a mother of two young children who had been imprisoned on charges of apostasy in sudan. from south asia to sahel, governments have silenced members of religious groups with oppressive laws, harsh punishments, and brutal tactics

that have no place in the 21st century. in iran, u.s. iranian citizen pastor saeed abedini remains imprisoned. the iranian authorities sentenced him to eight years behind bars simply because of his religious beliefs. we will continue to call for his release and we will continue to work for it. and make no mistake: we will continue to stand up for religious minority communities under assault and in danger around the world, from jehovah's witnesses to baha'is to ahmadi muslims. so we have a long way to go to safeguard these rights. we also have a long way to go when governments use national security as an excuse to repress members of minority religious groups. in russia, the government has used a succession of ever more punitive laws against what they call extremism to justify crude

measures against people of faith. in china, authorities harass christians. they arrest tibetan buddhists simply for possessing the dalai lama's photograph. and they prevent uighur muslims from providing religious education to their children or fasting during ramadan. and in uzbekistan, the government continues to imprison its citizens, raid religious gatherings, and confiscate and destroy religious literature. these tactics continue to pose an incredible test. but make no mistake: these tactics will fail the test of history. one of the troubling trends identified in this year's report is how sectarian violence continues to displace families and devastate communities. thousands of rohingya muslims

have been displaced in burma in the wake of sectarian violence, and tens of thousands more are living in squalid camps without adequate medical care. in pakistan, militants killed more than 500 shia muslims in sectarian bloodletting and brutally murdered 80 christians in a single church bombing last year. the pakistani government has yet to take adequate steps to bring those responsible to justice. in nigeria, boko haram has killed more than 1,000 people over the last year alone, and that includes christian and muslim religious leaders, individuals who were near churches and mosques, worshipers, and bystanders alike. and we have all seen the savagery and incredible brutality of the islamic state of iraq and the levant, the wholesale slaughter of shia muslims, the forced conversions

of christians in mosul, the rape, executions, and use of women and children as human shields. all of these acts of barbarism underscore the stakes. just the other week, isil declared that any remaining christians in mosul must convert, pay a tax, or be executed on the spot. around the world, repressive governments and extremist groups have been crystal clear about what they stand against. so we have to be equally clear about what we must stand for. we stand for greater freedom, greater tolerance, greater respect for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. with this report, i emphasize we are not arrogantly telling people what to believe.

we're not telling people how they have to live every day. we're asking for the universal value of tolerance, of the ability of people to have a respect for their own individuality and their own choices. we are asserting a universal principle for tolerance. the abrahamic faiths christianity, judaism, and islam have to find new meaning in the old notion of our shared descent. what really is our common inheritance? what does it mean to be brothers and sisters and to express our beliefs in mutual tolerance and understanding? answering those questions is our mission today. edmund burke once famously said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. this report is the work of good

men and women who are doing something profound in the face of bigotry and injustice. and let me share with, you around the world, some of today's greatest advocates in this cause are doing their part every day, some of them at great risk and in great danger. they are doing it in order to force light into darkness. in pakistan, following the militant attacks i just mentioned, members of the muslim community formed human chains around churches to demonstrate solidarity against senseless sectarian violence. in egypt, muslim men stood in front of a catholic church to protect the congregation from attacks. and in london, an orthodox jewish neighborhood watch team helped muslim leaders protect their mosque and prevent future attacks. there are many, many, many examples of people standing up

for this universal value of tolerance and doing so for themselves at great risk. there are many whose names and communities and watch teams we will never know. but they will not receive prizes; they may not ever receive recognition. their courage goes unremarked, but that makes it all the more remarkable, because they put their lives on the line in face of beatings and imprisonment and even death, in the near certainty that their sacrifice will be anonymous. believe me, that's the definition of courage. so while serious challenges to religious freedom remain, i know that the power of the human spirit can and will triumph over them. it is not just up to the rabbis, the bishops, and the imams. it's up to all of us to find the common ground and draw on what must be our common resolve to put our universal commitments

into action. tom malinowski will speak further, be prepared to answer any questions, and i'm very grateful to you all for being here for this important report and for allowing me to introduce you to the president's nominee. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> thanks everyone. sorry i'm not the secretary. so let me just pick up where the secretary left off and talk a little bit about the report and some of the highlights, some of which, of course, he already mentioned.

the 2013 international religious freedom report documents how, where and when the universal rights to religious freedom was violated or protected in nearly 200 countries around the world. and it reflects the commitment the secretary expressed of the united states to advancing religious freedom for every person. now, from my point of view, religious freedom is fundamental because it protects our ability to hold, change the most deeply held and personal convictions. being deeply held and deeply personal, religious beliefs are often strongly contested. but the most significant abuses of religious freedom, those involving large-scale persecution and killing rarely arise naturally from religious differences among ordinary people. there is usually the additional factor of cynical calculation by political forces seeking to

maintain power or exploit religious differences for political ends. authoritarian governments, for example, often cannot tolerate independent communities of conscious beyond state control. when i was a kid visiting the country where i was born, poland, in the 1980s, i remember seeing how threatened the communist authorities were by catholic communities and churches where every sunday sanctuaries were created, where people did not fear their government. buddhist monasteries in burma played a similar role under military rule, rule, and they were similarly persecuted. likewise, today the chinese government often severely restricts the ability of unregistered religious or racial groups to me, sometimes banning them outright, persecuting their defenders like a human rights lawyer. we urge chinese authorities to release him ask you to on

august 7 and allowed them to return to his family. without harassment or restrictions. in tibet efforts continued to assert control over tibet and buddhist religious practice. the secretary mentioned the chinese government also severely restricts the religious practices of the uighur muslims, including banning fasting during the month of ramadan and for civil servant teachers and others. broadly targeting and and higher religious or ethnic unity in response to the action of the few, only increases the potential for violence extremists. in vietnam, individuals and congregations of multiple face reported harassment, surveillance throughout the year. that said, the vietnamese government is making some progress on religious freedom, registering over 100 church congregations in 2013, and

inviting the u.n. special repertoire on freedom of religious beliefs to visit the country. does the christian remains the only country on earth to ban people under the age of 18 from participating in public religious activity -- does the christian. as the secretary making people begin for religious reasons suffered beatings and torture in some religious groups were denied places to worship or even the ability to print or import religious rituals. in sudan laws are still on the books prohibiting conversion from islam to another religion, contradicting the constitution. these are all examples of governments. as i mentioned abuses also happen when political forces exploit differences between of their community. it's a very old tactic. pic a religious group, cultivate

hatred and fear in members of the group and then use it to build support for your side, or least distract people from opposing view. in burma, if you fear or oppose your country for political progress, you're probably not going to convince too many people to be against democracy. at you might get some are by trying to divide people across religious and racial lines. focusing political discourse on issues like interfaith marriage and religious conversion. and so we've seen burma's so-called 969 of its support by prominent nationalist monks in fuel anti-muslim sentiment and violence in the country that has a large tradition of different communities living together. in pakistan violence targeted members of religious minorities and human rights defenders underscored the governments failure to provide adequate security. earlier this year we were deeply saddened by the murder of a lawyer and human rights defender

who despite threats to his life was representing a university professor accused of blasphemy. and the tories continue to enforce blasphemy laws and laws designed to marginalize the muslim community. it around the secretary mentioned the case of pastor aberdeen. we urge the iranian government and every opportunity to press for his release but the government also continues to persecute. secretary kerry already described what is on all of our minds today. we strongly condemn the despicable and cowardly murder of 13 sunni muslim clerics in mosul in june. these brave and honorable men and true to their post reject isil and paid the ultimate sacrifice. since then isil has been forced to moratorium that the secretary mentioned to expel non-muslims and shia in mosul to force them

to convert to islam or to leave the city or face execution. in europe, many countries are seeing a rise of nationalist political parties that a spouse and tolerance, targeting jews and muslims along with nonreligious minority groups. in hungary, the government did not speak out against recent efforts to rehabilitate anti-semitic world war ii figures. we urge the government of hungary to engage in constructive dialogue with stakeholders concerned about plans to memorialize the 70th anniversary of the world war ii round of of jews, roma, and other minorities by nancy forces and their hungarian -- nazi forces and their hungarian allies. in france come were concerned by the 11% increase in anti-muslim incidents recorded in 2013 as well as by recent physical assaults against members of the jewish entity.

we applaud the french government continued efforts to promote interfaith understand and combat racist, anti-semitic and anti-muslim acts. as we've seen in the past and still today, the exploitation of religious difference for political ends can have far-reaching consequences. religious freedom is fundamentally about preserving that respect for human differences and diversity that is necessary to keep the size and countries from teddington cellsosupport, something that is painfully obvious as we look around the world today. that's why as president obama said at the national prayer breakfast earlier this year, freedom of religious matters to our national security. fortunately, as the second are also mentioned, some of our strongest allies are leaders and communities of faith working to counter religious hatred, interfaith leaders in burma campaign for tolerance, catholic volunteers in poland cleaning up anti-semitic graffiti, students in malaysia organizing interreligious marches to visit

sacred sites in their neighborhoods. we've also seen religious leaders take a stand on behalf of vulnerable groups like lgbt people. we hope this report will be a resource for people all around the world working to end of religious persecution, and that the spotlight we are showing on those responsible through that report and a designation today can help to delegitimize and to deter such acts. thank you. happy to take a couple of questions. >> let's start with nicole. spectacular much for this report. in the overview, the introduction, it says 2013 saw the highest level of displacement in recent memory. i'm wondering if you can quantify that forced some. and secondly, i think the law that mandates this report also gives the u.s. the power to sanction countries that are engaged in severe abuses. and i just wonder, especially

given the use of the word severe in relation to saudi arabia for treatment of religious minorities, if there's any possibility, if the administration is thinking about using this sanctions power with respect to this report. >> okay, thanks. on the first question, i'm wary of precise quantifying we were talking about places were hundreds of thousands of people were millions of people have been displaced and displaced for a variety of reasons. we made that statement at the front of the report because as we look at places like iraq right now, and syria, of course, over the last couple of years, central african republic, it seems to is that in recent memory we've not seen the numbers of people pushed from the homes in conflicts that have a religious or sectarian dimension. so beyond that i don't want to throw out numbers because i don't think i responsibly to do

that. >> could you maybe through of some more countrymen? >> i think probably the greatest in terms of numbers right now is, we're looking at in terms of recent displacement, we be looking at syria, iraq. i mentioned the trend to come and we can probably get back to you with some more -- mentioned that c.a.r. and as for sanctions it's an appropriate over some cases. was employed a variety of sanctions of course with respect to number of countries that had been listed as cbc's in the past. the tests are made for us is what's going to be effective in any particular case, that's a case-by-case structure. >> thank you, sir. i have a quick question. how do you raise issues like blasphemy laws and the lack for these freedoms with countries

like your allies, like saudi arabia? just in statements like this? to say you must do this or we will do this? inadequate follow-up. >> we raise it in all kinds of ways. we raise a publicly. the report polls actually no punches on blasphemy laws in pakistan, saudi, and a number of other countries around the world. we'd also be raised blasphemy laws, colluding with pakistan, in numerous diplomatic meetings in private. we've asked countries that have such laws, which we consistently oppose, we believe that it is never okay to punish people for professing changing or talking to others about their religious beliefs, and we've certainly raise that with officials of numerous countries around the world. >> now some of the countries that have very tight -- entrance of their not tolerant, let's say, of religious freedom, they even are less tolerant for those who want to practice freedom

from religion, as a matter fact. how do you raise these issues in many other countries, even some of your liberal allies or supposedly liberal allies as in jordan or lebanon or others, for people to congregate and organize as atheists? >> freedom of conscience is freedom of conscience, and it applies to the freedom not to believe in a particular faith or in any faith. >> thank you. one of the country listed as cpc during this year's report as well as last previously years is china. last year of the u.s. and china has a human rights dialogue in kunming last july. i wonder if there's any timetable for this year's dialogue, and what is the status of that? >> well, we just had human rights dialogue industry could and economic dialogue with china. in other words, we don't need to have a formal dialogue that is labeled a human rights dialogue

in order to raise at the highest level with the chinese authorities our concerns about human rights. so secretary kerry and other officials raised a number of these issues at the s&ed. subsequently we had a counterterrorism dialogue here in washington at which we raised repeatedly the issue of persecution of uighurs in china's far west and the impact that that has on the shared interests that we have with china on fighting extremism and violence. so we don't have a date right now for the next formal human rights dialogue. we'd like to have one but it doesn't stop us from raising the issue. >> in this year's report there is concern regarding a religious structure being demolished without consultation with the church leaders. and just as they are releasing this report, we heard from china there's churches such as the cross sign up on the church was

demolished without consultation agreed by the teacher -- by a leader, church leaders. is this a worrying trend? do you have any comments on this? >> that in cases like that, and we are aware of the most recent one that you just mentioned and absently are concerned about it. people should have a right to express their religious beliefs, and that's a value that we will continue to stand up for, even in cases of countries like china, where we have broad and complex relationships. >> one final question. in august 2011 the state department extended sanctions, existing sanctions under ir fa -- irfa, related to restrictions on exports of crime control and detection instruments. could you please elaborate on that, what kind of sank in? >> let get back to you on that. >> so as christians are persecuted in iraq and much of the middle east, there's one

region in iraq, kurdistan, which has welcomed the christians. does your report have anything to say about the state of religious freedom in the kurdistan region of iraq? >> yes, and i refer you to the report on specifics on kurdistan. i would say that with immediate crisis of mosul and other communities that are being cleansed by i sold -- isil, one of the steps that we've taken is to talk to the authorities in the kurdish region to encourage them to the people who, unfortunately, have had to flee for their lives, and we are very pleased that they are, in fact, doing so. >> i have a question for rabbi saperstein. >> he's not answering questions today, because he stole a nominee, but i'm sure there will be time later. >> pastor abedini, i was one if you talk but what the secretary is done when he's at the table with iran to intervene for this american citizen. >> i can say we have on numerous

occasions in the context of the talks, around the talks, urged the government of iran to release him. >> has the secretary intervened himself? >> i believe the secretary has raised his case, yes. >> we will do one more. i mean it this time, last one. >> yes, please. in the recent year it is obvious that the central government are not playing a role in controlling what's going on within what's happening now in iraq, what happened before in syria, and more or less, in egypt, some cases. how do you handle this issue? because the report is made as if we're talking about government. and how do you handle this new trend of the middle east in dealing, for example, what the islamists are the jihadists are dealing with christians in dislocating or locating them in and of the placed? >> in many cases we did with nonstate actors like isil and

related groups in iraq and syria. and the report is very clear in making those distinctions. at the same time, governments do have greater responsibilities. and often governments, through repressive practices, create conditions that enable these nonstate groups to arise and to grow and flourish. and so ultimately, we do, in this area, as in all human rights issues, we do hold governments to a high degree of responsibility. thank you. >> great. thank you all. take a quick break and then come back. thanks for coming today. >> thank you, everyone. >> the u.s. senate is about to gavel been. they will start the day with the general speeches and then at about noon eastern, senators will start debate on president obama's picked ahead of veteran

affairs department. a boat is planned for later this afternoon. also today we could see debate on temporary funding for highway and transportation projects. live coverage now of the u.s. senate here on c-span2. the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. almighty god, our gracious