another debating society. we need action. in this spirit, the september launch, $100 million contributed by several members to develop rule of law institutions. the united arab em rates announced its intention to host a center of glens in encountering violence extremism. the center will support research and dialogue. i see that i've gone over my time. with that, i'll conclude my remarks. thank you very much. >> thank you. i'm going to go to mr. sherman first for his questions.

>> i've advocated for well over a decade that you and your predecessors, for any terrorist listed organization that evidence is a desire not to be on the list as the ira wants evidence such a desire. and if they do meet those conditions, to remove them and the continued designation of the mek doesn't meet that standard in that they could meet and justify and the second concern i

have is that maybe the process has been influenced by poorly conceived notion that will be nice to tehran and tehran will be nice to us and therefore we will list the enemies that they seem to hate the most and then finally the camp ashraf and to depresent violent attacks on them. and we see individuals at that camp unable to get refugee status in europe in part because of that designation. when reviewing potential fto

targets, the state department and whether it retains the capacity and intent to carry out such attack and there are times when we should add to the terrorists more quickly. we did not designate al qaeda the arain bee general peninsula the days before the attempted bombing of the airline in 2009 by one of its members. similarly, the pakistani taliban was not designated until months after the attack on times square. and we have not yet designated the afghan kni taliban and whatn

we do to make the designation process more nimble, better to carry out its purposes and act quickly to designate those organizations that are a real threat and to remove those who were either a threat or have changed their behavior appropriately. >> ranking member sherman, we surely agree with your desire to be more nimble or at least be able to work more quickly on designations. in the last two years, the office, now the bureau, has done

nor designations than in the previous years combined and we have significantly stepped up the pace of work. mr. royce spoke before about did i additional staff. we are trying to build up our staff so we can do more in this area. having said that, the law nonetheless and the practice that has been established by the department over the recent decades requires us to be extremely diligent, dlib bra tif, and complete, comprehensive in our efforts here and we have not found any shortcuts to compiling the kinds of baseline analysis and investor of information necessary both to list and de-list. i have a lot of people working very, very hard on this but we

haven't yet found get us to whether a group belongs on or off the list. >> thank you. i know that your folks are working hard. you've done a lot. appreciate your service and at the same time. >> the overall question of elevating a bureau, as you and i have discussed, we supported elevation to the bureau. the point was, that the state department had the chasity and

they had two slots so at the end of the day, despite assurances so that was the issue at hand for us. in terms of what the state department does he a getting to the issues at hand, the one that i wanted to ask you about was a quote from a columnist last week. here's his question. you can answer it. osama bin laden lived in five houses in pakistan, fathered four children there, kept three wives, had two children born in public hospitals. through it all, the pakistani

government did not know one single thing about his where dltds bts. can this possibly be true, he asks? i don't know what the -- what is your opinion on that? >> mr. royce, on that 17% figure, i would like to just underscore and that projection had already been a work for the bureau -- >> and ambassador, you and i don't really have an argument about that. it's the overall decision by the state department to not live within the constraints put by the congress in terms of the total number of bureaus and the easy way to get around it was not to elevate you to bureau status within the existing -- i

just want to explain that. we're good on that. but it's the agency, you know, it's the department that i think needs to play by the rules that are set out in terms of the constraint. but go ahead here. >> with regard to the issue and we do find it remarkable but we still to this point do not have any evidence that suggests that the pakistani government per se had any knowledge of bin laden's

whereabouts and we have no conclusive evidence that the pakistani government knew where he was. >>. >> let me ask you in africa, let me thought here the relationship with al qaeda. after the easter attacks on a number of churches in nigeria, it left dozens of people dead.

and islamist fighters have now descended on the northern part of the country. top leaders of al qaeda's north african branch have been seen in the area reportedly. so i would just ask you, what is the outlook there? i had a muslim governor of a northern nigeria providence tell me that he was very, very concerned with the change in the islam bringing a lot of money with them but there was always from the gold state who would then set up shop and begin expressing a different type of

islam and he was concerned with his security in northern islam. i'd like your insights here. >> thank you very much, sir. we are deeply concerned by what is going on in nigeria. and i would say that whoever is not the principle driver, it is certainly the case that extremism in the north a and nigeria is being expressed in intrareligious strive and there have been a lot of attacks on churches. that is obviously the case. we are deeply concerned about any connections that boca horam

which is a cluster of organizations may have in particular with al qaeda and it seems clear that some of their trade craft, some of their ability to carry out terrorist attacks was learned from aqim. we continue to encourage the nigerian government to engage communities vulnerable to extremist violence and those problems are considerable. >> and the department is going to work through to other relevant agencies and international partners to identify ways that we can erode the capacity of boca horan to carry out the u.n. compound that was bombed and also to prevent

attacks against our friends and their interest in nigeria as well. >> well, if i could interject, the observations that he made to me, as long as you have the importation of religious leaders with the students, according to him he had been in this particular madrosa which was across the street from where he was educated, a very, very different curriculum. if you indoctrine nate and raise young kids with that type of ideology, as long as these schools, some 600 of these schools continues to do that, in pakistan, and now that they are doing it in nigeria and have been doing it for quite a while,

you've got to expect problems from the graduating class and you talk a lot about addressing these different factors. but to me it seems that the brainwashing and indoctrination of this type of ideology so early in life, when you're teaching people to commit jihad and giving them that absolutist view point, which now this particular boca horam wants to -- if education itself is a sin and the goal is simply to indoctrinate and brainwash, without solving that problem, without shutting that down, the rest of it doesn't seem too persuasive to me. our inability to shut down those 600 schools over the last generation is something that is beyond me. it's beyond me why the pakistani government won't do it and my

concern today over what's happening in nigeria is the same. >> if i may sir, the world of islam is profoundly complex and there are groups, individual donors and the like who advocate beliefs that involve a strong anti--western sentiment of the kind that you are describing who are funding activities far from their own homes and this is indeed a major problem. the ability to crowd out or combat extremism, an important extent on the ability of those countries and donors to provide

the social goods such as education that will make those schools unattractive. >> all right. but we provided the schools in pakistan or helped do so. i went and visited some of those schools the last time i went back. those schools have been blown up. all i'm saying is that until those schools are shut down by that government in pakistan and for the united states and certainly for troops in afghanistan for people in southern russia to come from central asia, it's a problem getting exported today and going on in the schools and the ineffect you'll effort to get it shut down. >> if i may, sir, just one more

point and that is that we do approach other governments with regularity and intervened and tell them about individuals who are supporting extremism in ways that lead to violence and the unacceptable outcomes that it brings with them. this is an activity that we embrace in a number of different channels and it's going to keep us busy. and the considerable amount of turn that is going on in that world has led to the kinds of rise in extremism that we have seen in some areas. and we also know that in particular there are socioeconomic grievances in places like northern nigeria that need to be addressed and

extremists and i want to just mention the issue thaw raised. i think it's important to recognize that northern mali has been a troubled area for many years. it's been the traditional haven of al qaeda for a number of years since that group was largely pushed out of the traditional region in algeria and it's a very sparsely populated area and barely under the control of bomaco. the u.s. has invested a number of resources in helping reclaim that sanctuary and extent the writ of the government there. unfortunately, those efforts are at a halt now because of the

coup. i would say there's not been a large influx of resources in somalia. what there has been is a rebellion, the latest in a long series going back over a century and this has disrupted all of our ability to work against that region with the regional partners and in the last few years in that collaboration, we're deeply concerned about the swalgs in mali and working in particular with others in africa to see to it that they return to democracy and return to our collaborative efforts to rid northern malia. >> the profile of many of these extremists are engineers, they are people of middle class background. certainly bin laden is an example of that.

the muslim governor i know came up with the radicalism. we have not stopped these people from indoctrinating kids. and until that is done, the problems will expand. >> mr. benjamin, we need again. it's kind of like groundhog day. we come to the same part of town and discuss the same issues. to my understanding, a foreign terrorist organization has got to do several things to be a terrorist organization and they must threaten the security of

the united states or u.s. nationals. in 2004, the mek gave up their weapons to the united states military. sense that time, name one terrorist act that the mek has committed since 2004. >> it is not our contention that the mek can be -- has committed an act since the group was disarmed. >> there has not been an act of terrorism by the mek against the united states since they gave up their weapons to us. is that right? >> we do not allege that there was such an act. >> do they have the capability

today, 2012, to engage in such a terrorism act against the united states? >> we have not come to a conclusion on that. >> you don't know whether they can -- i mean, you're the guy who is supposed to tell us about terrorism and the world. you don't know whether tek has an ability to commit a terrorist attack against the united states? >> mr. poe, no one has been in to inspector otherwise investigate what is in the camp right now and we also cannot rule out the possibility that the mek may have weaponry elsewhere. >> well, you don't know that. you don't have any evidence that the mek has a stockpile of weapons some place. you have no evidence of that, do you? >> i can't go into the intelligence record on that in this setting. >> well, let me ask you this. since i have seen all of the intelligence that you have

furnished this committee, myself, ranking sherman and others, is there any new evidence since the last briefing we got by your department and the cia? >> and if there is, are we going to get a briefing on this? >> sir, we'd certainly be happy to entertain a request for another briefing from the intelligence committee. i think it's safe to say that there is always intelligence coming in and frankly i don't know what exactly was in the briefing that you got which was quite some time ago. this is a dlib bra tif process and we are working hard on it and we are not finished. but i do want to emphasize that as the secretary has said, given the ongoing efforts of the closure of the camp, the mek's main paramilitary base will be a

factor regarding the mek status. >> last year in may when you were here you told me that the state department was going to, quote, make a decision within six months on whether to continue the designation or de-list them. we are a year later. how much longer is it going to be before you can make a decision? >> well, i certainly regret the fact that while my prediction on that was incorrect. i cannot give you a date certain. as you know, the parties are in court on that as well. we are working as fast as we can and as i said before and as the secretary has said, the closing of the camp will be a key factor in any desession. >> without going into any classified information, have you received any new information in the last year about the mek's activities as a foreign

organization? >> we have received communication in june and had an exchange between our attorneys and theirs about this issue. >> have you received any information that they are a foreign terrorist -- it's a specific question. not what you've received from them. have you gotten any information in the last year that the mek, who doesn't have any weapons, is a foreign terrorist organization? >> that goes to the question of intelligence which i just can't discuss. >> i'm requesting the briefing through the appropriate chairman that we have that confidential intelligence. when i was in iraq with other members of the committee, we want wanted to go see camp

ashraf. one reason by malaki declined us to let us visit the camp ashraf was because the united states continues to put them on the foreign terrorist organization. is the united states succumbing to the keep them on the fdo organization list? >> absolutely not. >> our decision is entirely going to be ornt merits, and we are not keeping him on the list because of anyone else's concerns or views regarding the group. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. pope. >> thank you, mr. chairman. before i begin, may i ask unanimous consent of my statement be entered into the record? thank you. i just came back from egypt and

libya over the break and have some views about what's happening in both those countries. from the united states point of view, does the arab sling and its outcome so far help or hurt or have no impact on ant anti-terrorism policy. >> it's an excellent question, sir. let me frame it this way. the arab spring and arab awakening presents everyone who opposes extreme imwithin an extraordinary opportunity. and that is to build the democracies in those countries, countries where people were denied their legitimate rights to build the kinds of democracies that would provide a place where people could express their dissent without turning to violence, where people would have a stake in the society without turning to violence.

>> i understand that. are the transitional governments in both libya, egypt and tunisia for that matter, do you find cooperation is about the same, improcedured or actually degraded? >> i would say that in the case of tunisia, it's undoubtedly improved, significantly. and in fact, my office will be conducting programs under the anti-terrorism assistance program there. there's no question there's been an improvement. i would say that we have good but decent relationship on counter terrorism with libya and our counter terrorism cooperation continues with egypt which is obviously a nation going through considerable -- major events. but we continue to work closely with them, and we are optimistic that that cooperation will continue into the future.