of the vulnerability we haven't even the attacks that are occurring and the exploitations occurring are largely invisible to the public, so am i right in this regard? the report you just cited said it. there is extensive ongoing theft of intellectual property of american businesses, which in fact enables competition from abroad that actually costs us jobs here at home and diminishes our economic prosperity at home. >> absolutely, sir. one of the downsides to this for the united states of course is particularly when people are robbing us of our technology which of course saves them the investment in r&d, so that's almost a double whammy if you will.

i think there is difficulty for some and something you cannot see, feel or touch, since it is a passive theft and you don't directly see immediately the negative impacts of that. unlike an attack, which obviously is by its nature active, in which he would feel the effect of the seizure of the banking system or the stopping of our electrical grid or some other egregious effect like that. >> and would you agree finally that general burgess, that right now are privately-owned and operated cyberinfrastructure, electric grid, banking system and transportation water supply are not adequately defended against such an attack? >> that is probably to ruby and it's uneven. some parts of the infrastructure

are reasonably well protected, but it's not complete and of course you are kind of at the whole weakest link proposition is the vulnerability. >> i wish is was just going to say and i am like director clapper, if not read the whole thing but from my days when i was in the director of national intelligence and took on the issue with mike mccollum of cybersecurity i think what you have put on the table, sir, is a great first step and as an american citizen, thank you for doing that. it is a good first step. it is progress. changes generally evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary, and i would say this is evolutionary in my humble opinion. if i have one thing that i would hope, as i think i understand,

there is not a requirement to share some information. it's encouraged. i always tell people when i speak publicly we are a nation separated by a common language. we all define words a little differently, so in terms of economic attack and so forth, some entities may not want folks to know about what has been taken and they are not required to divulge it, so just to comment from the peanut gallery. >> a i take that seriously. it's a good comment. it's a thoughtful poke and thank you for your words. thank you is to chairman. >> thank you senator lieberman. senator inhofe. >> thank you mr. chairman. i really think this is a better hearing than we would have with the straightforward responses and i appreciate that very much and your comment about language, i'm going to get that from the record and use it later on.

>> i just wrote wrote adelle. >> that was a good one, general. i think we pretty much have decided on this 20%, getting back to iran now, that's it's something that is being achieved as we talk. general burgess said we have the scientific, technical and industrial capabilities for producing a weapon that we didn't really talk about when. when is the big issue? i remember what secretary panetta said just the other day about and we repeated that several times, some of the questioners have and i think that is consistent. back in the debate where we have difference of opinion as to whether not we should continue with the ground-based interceptor in poland. at that time the unclassified date was actually 2015 so this is pretty consistent. one thing i don't understand, and i think there a lot of people who don't and i would like to get clarification. we do know in terms of the

percentage necessary for the production of power we are talking from 3.525% enrichment. is that something that has been used? >> i think so, sir. i don't know what the percentage is. >> alright, but it is certainly less than the 20% which is apparently where they are right now. >> yes, sir, i would guess. >> this morning in today's earlybird they talk about iran has been met -- reactor to justify uranium to 20%, the higher level of refinement that the nuclear power systems require. the higher enriched material also enables iran to potentially move more quickly so it talks about something that i have heard and i assume is correct that the difficulty is getting up to the 20 percentage. the time between reaching that

level and reaching the 90% that we have been concerned about goes much more rapidly than it would eat to get up to 20%. is this accurate? >> that is generally true, sir but there are a number of factors that would affect the pace and volume, which would frankly be best left to the closed discussion. i would be happy to do that with you. >> and that is good but these are things we assume, we talk about and my concern is that when we do end up getting to that point, it's been reported by the president that it's weighing the options of cutting down our nuclear arsenal unilaterally by up to 80%, and that is something that i'm very much concerned about and there are a lot of us who actually, in fact during the treaty, the new

s.t.a.r.t. treaty was debated. we are concerned about these things and i still am. it's my understanding, and i remember and i want to read a quote by the president when the president was trying to get the additional signatures on board to pass the treaty. he made some commitment and he said i recognized the nuclear modernization requires investment in the long term and is my commitment to the congress that my administration will pursue these as long as i am president. and yet in fiscal year 13 budget, decreasing that amount by $347 million actually delaying the system of modernization. i have a quote that i've used recentlyby talks about, i can't find it right here but it talks about the fact that we have some 30 other

countries to defend underwrite nuclear umbrella and do a knee -- make either one of you have any comments about this, which is not a proposal yet but it's a discussion of production of some 80%. >> well sir, that is news to me, and to what extent we may reduce or not our nuclear arsenal, i can assure you that the intelligence community will be a participant and would certainly convey you know the threat dimensions of this. particularly with respect to our primary nuclear, the nation's primary nuclear concern which of course is russia and china. >> well, yeah. you said it's news to you but it was just released yesterday. maybe when you were preparing for this hearing you didn't get that. let me just mention something about north korea. >> what i meant was by news to

me was reducing to that extent. >> that was in a release yesterday. in the area of north korea, have always been concerned about the accuracy of our intelligence there and i told the story of going back in 1998 when we made the request as to when north korea would have the capability, and at that time, they talked about three to five years and seven days later in 1998, august 31, they actually fired one and i would just like to know how confident you, the two of you are on the quality of the intelligence we have on north korea? >> i have followed north korea for a long time and served on the armed intelligence for korea in the 80's and i will tell you north korea's one of the toughest intelligence targets we have and it has long been. it's a very very secretive

society, very controlled society, so and there is ambiguity about our insight into north korea's nuclear capabilities and their intentions. and there is -- there are some promising developments which i would be happy to discuss with you in closed session. with respect to enhancing the quality of our intelligence insights. >> i appreciate that very much. thank you mr. chair. >> thank you very much senator inhofe. senator webb is next. >> thank you mr. chairman and mr. chairman and senator inhofe

both actually the writer in me has to say this. before you use that quote from general burgess, believe the first person who made that statement was winston churchill when he said that the united states and britain were two countries separated by a common language. i did not want to out you general burgess but someone was going to do it sooner or later. it actually goes to one of the points that i need to make this morning and to ask both of you for your advice and that is ports do count. i also sit on the foreign relations committee and the last few days we have been trying to put together a resolution with respect to syria and first i would say director that your comments, your testimony and your comments were very helpful

today and you can hear the frustration from people like senator mccain on the fact that people think they need to do something but we have to be careful what we do and we have to be careful about the statements that we make as a senate. i have had a number of occasions since i've been here to attempt to look at some of the statements that are well-meaning but hastily drawn and sometimes overly conclusive in their tone. and yet are not really complete in the detail, and these things are pulled into the media and they unanimously have made this particular conclusion about one event or another. we have general dempsey appeared two days ago. i asked him a question about the nature of the opposition in

syria. the question going not to what the assad regime would be capable of doing, which by the way director, thought you laid out very, in very understandable specifics, but really what is on the other side? who are they? how much of this is domestic? how much of it is for an? what is the regional dynamic, and he made one comment and i'm going to give a partial quote. he said syria is a different situation than we collectively saw in libya and presents a very different challenge in which we also know that other regional actors are providing support rebelling against an oppressive regime. we all know this and i think you made some comments about this as well. i asked him about the reports in the media last week that al qaeda was involved in some of the assassination attempts in

syria. he would not reject it out of hand. he said he did not know but one of the things that general dempsey was very clear about was they were still attempting to analyze the intelligence information to come to some sort of conclusions of this is sort of an opportune time for me to be able to ask both of you, what are your thoughts on the nature of the opposition that is active on the ground and in syria right now? >> let me take a stab at that and then i will ask general burgess to amplify or correct as the case may be. as i indicated earlier the opposition is very -- there is not a national movement even though there is a title the title of the so-called syrian national council. a lot of that is from external exiles and the like, but there is not a unitary connected opposition force. it's very local.

it's on a community by community basis and in fact in some communities the opposition is actually providing municipal services as though it's trying to defend itself against attacks from the syrian regime controlled military. the free syrian army, which is kind of a blanket generic name, sort of applied to a collection of oppositionists is itself not identified. there is an internal feud about who is going to lead it. comput katie and this, as you implied, of course are sort of the neighborhood dynamics. the iranians, very very concerned about propping up assad so they have an sense helped in terms of trainers, advisers and equipment, mostly suppression equipment and that sort of thing.

a few, and other disturbing phenomenon that we have seen recently apparently is the presence of extremist who have infiltrated the opposition mayors, the opposition groups in many cases may not be aware that they are there. we had the two attacks that you alluded to, bombings in damascus, in december i think it was and then the two additional bombings and, both of which were targeted against the security and intelligence buildings, and had all the earmarks of an al qaeda like attack. so we believe that al qaeda in iraq is extending its reach into syria. complicating all of this is, and this is another contrast with libya, where we have one or two or three sites that had chemical

warfare components. it is a much more complex issue in syria, which has an extensive network of installations. although to this point, and we are watching these very carefully, they appear to be secured. so many complexities here involving the opposition, which i am sure will affect any discussion about coming to some assistance. >> sir, there is not a whole lot i can add to what director clapper laid out. the only other comment i would make is in regards to, what we have seen reference to al qaeda like defense. as we try and look at some of that, it appears to be those elements that may already be in the country, but what we haven't seen so far, and what we have

not assessed yet is whether there would be what i would call a clarion call to outsiders coming in, to augment. we haven't seen much of that up to this time, so basically the team that is on the ground is playing with what it has. >> thank you. my time is up but i would like to read very briefly from a piece that was just published by wesley doe group that needs no introduction, a foreign-policy expert in our country. saying, when intervention is become -- they blind themselves a nation and run dangerously amok. they plunge in with no plans with have a plan to demands to supply arms to rebels they know nothing about, with ideas for no-fly zones and bombings. their good intentions could pave the role to syrians preserving

lives in sacrificing many more later. again, i hope members of this body will keep this in mind as we develop policies. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you senator webb. >> thank you mr. chairman. director clapper, general burgess thank you so much for being here today and for your service. director clapper i believe you previously testified that the reengage me rate from those who have been released from guantánamo bay was 27%. what is the current re-engagement raid of terrorists who have been released from guantánamo and have they gone up again in the 27%? >> i think the next assessment will reflect a very small less than one percentage point increase. >> so the next assessment will reflect perhaps a percentage

increase, so from 27% to 28%? >> somewhere in that neighborhood. >> certainly anyone being released from there and getting back is one too many, isn't it? >> has. >> i wanted to ask you about, there has been reports from the administration about the potential of exchanging and i asked secretary panetta about this the other day, of five detainees to cutter in exchange -- qatar in exchange for the taliban in afghanistan. as i understand, the detainees that have been reported by both "the washington post" and "the wall street journal," they have been previously assessed by the administration in 2010 to present a high risk of returning to the site. has the designation for these five detainees changed by the administration? >> no, maam, they have not, and

i hasten to add that of course negotiations have always been a part of any winding down of combat hostilities and that is the case here. this is a case of exploring the option to see what sort of reaction we might get from the taliban, but a couple of points i would make here is that i don't think anyone harbors any illusions about the taliban members and what they might do if they were transferred. part and parcel to this discussion would he they are transferred to a third country such as qatar and then the conditions under which they would he surveilled and monitored. i would also want to add to that under the provisions of the defense authorization act of fy12 the secretary of defense

has certified his view on whether or not anyone could be transferred with respect to their recidivism. i can tell you from personal encounters with secretary panetta, he treats that authority with the gravity that it deserves, so this is something i think the administration will do very deliberately. >> well and i appreciate that and i appreciate what the secretary had to say about his responsibilities the other day and i know he is serious but i want people to understand very clearly these individuals were high risk. nothing has changed about that assessment and the notion that we can monitor them or surveilled them, we have tried that in the past with releasing people that have come from guantánamo to third-party countries. now we think it may go up to 20% rain gauge might rate for what i understand the administration is described as goodwill from the

taliban. i think this is a non-acceptable risk. i think that unless we are going to get them to lay down their arms, don't know why we would do this to our military men and women into our allies, so i appreciate what you are saying. i just think this is a huge risk in terms of safety for our troops and our allies. i wanted to ask you briefly about iran. i know you have gotten many questions, both of you, but iran but i want to clarify a couple of issues. does the iranian regime continued to support hezbollah? what kind of threat has a poser ally israel and is iran supporting the gaza strip and what role as iran playing in iraq? >> i did not write down all of those questions. >> basically, do they continue to support hezbollah? >> yes, they do. there is a very close relationship between

particularly the irgc and the quds force which is the organization responsible for external operations around the world and hezbollah. it is kind of a partnership arrangement with the iranians as a senior partner. >> is hezbollah not a terrorist group that threatens our close ally, israel? >> yes. >> does iran continue to support hamas and the gaza strip? >> indirectly, yes. >> are there not a threat also to israel and also to gaza? >> hamas? yes. >> general burgess is iran supporting the insurgents in iraq, excuse me in afghanistan and? >> yes, maam. >> okay and what type of roller they playing in afghanistan? >> they have provided arms. they have been caught. we have found iranian arms in afghanistan, so you know they are working for what would it

call a dual-track strategy as they work not only to work against u.s. and coalition desires, but while at the same time they want to move forward the government of afghanistan so they're walking a very fine line. >> but they're clearly supporting our enemies and trying to kill our soldiers. >> yes, maam. >> and that iraq will roller they playing right now and how would you describe their the role there? >> i would describe their role in much the same way as they did in afghanistan is a very dual-track. iran does not want a strong iraq on their border, but at the same time, they also want do you know in courage us out of there totally, so again they are walking both sides of the fence. >> so again they are working contrary to a stable iraq and

they are also working contrary to our national security interest? >> i would not disagree with that statement. >> they would like to have a cooperative shia dominated government in iraq, which they have but that is not to say that the iraqi government whether molecules representing the complete satellite of iran. he has his issues with the iranians as well. >> but clearly their efforts are continuing to fuel sectarian violence. >> absolutely. the three principle shia militant groups that iran has supported in the past, some of which were directly responsible for attacks on u.s. forces, of course the issue is whether you know, they will turn their ire against the iraqi government or

simply become part of the political process remains to be seen. >> when you throw on top but of course their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, no question there are a grave threat to our national security and to that of our ally? >> that is true. iran is a big problem. >> thank you. >> thank you senator ayottie. >> i join with other members of the committee in thanking you for your service and your excellent testimony here this morning. focusing on afghanistan and the roadside loans or ieds. as you know, members of this committee and the united states senate consider the role of pakistan in providing ingredients used to make those roadside alms as a great threat to this nation's back in the 2012 defense authorization act.

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they have to up the major companies that produce this material or located in pakistan. there is extensive network from pakistan into afghanistan to move these materials. >> we know what those plants are. do we not? the macuser, we do. >> in fact, the congressional delegation that i joined as recently as august met with at least one of the owners of those plants who indicated their production is ongoing and the pakistanis have the wherewithal to stop the flow of those ingredients into afghanistan, did not, so? >> well, that is a good question, sir is how much the pakistani government controlled any name in the five top and the flat-out regions which border afghanistan. but it is clear they could do more than they have at this