increasingly important role in our intelligent and scanning efforts. the intelligence committee, the fbi is obtaining hundreds of terrorism convictions in their federal courts. earlier this month, for example, a federal jury in new york handed down a guilty verdict in one of the most serious terrorism plots since 9/11, which involved plans to carry out suicide bombings in the new york subway in 2009. according to the predictions of some, the terrorism trial proceeded without a hitch in a federal court in the heart of new york city. a lot of the new yorkers live and work near the courthouse and they were convicted. the defendant was convicted on the need for mandatory military custody and interrogation, served him with the definite

need of detention at guantanamo bay and elsewhere. it's going to be facing life imprisonment. this is only one example, and there are many, many of them in federal and criminal courts trying terrorism cases. in the recent year the christmas day bomber, the times square bomber were conducted convicted and sent to life imprisonment. the fbi used its expertise and experience to obtain statements, to write miranda warnings and they did all that without reporting to torture and not only did they get a great deal of information, some of which we cannot go into in open session, but they also got convictions. in contrast the military commission proceeding the 9/11 plotters are just the beginning at guantanamo bay. and there's going to be lengthy litigation concerning torture and mistreatment of independence. the trial itself won't start

until some time next year, unlike the trials that have already been completed and people are being sentenced. moreover as director mueller pointed out during the defense of the @ authorization bill. they are gathering intelligence and they are co-sponsoring the attempt, which would repeal that mandatory detention requirement. in the coming months i also look forward to speak to the administration's re@rization. they are giving the committee with ways to protect the country against terrorist threats. we have to be sure that we protect the privacy rights and civil liberties of law-abiding americans.

or i try to reauthorize the patriot act. the bipartisan improvements were not enacted. as congress considers the administration's question to reauthorize the vice amendment act, i'll look at whether we should retrain accountability or liberty protections in various parts. we are faced with a daunting national security challenge, and director mueller is maintaining historic focus on fighting crime. at a time of economic crises and shrinking state local enforcement budgets, many expect violent crimes to skyrocket. instead, crime rates across the country continue to decline. along with the commitment of the president and the congress to continue federal assistance to state and local law enforcement, the dedicated service of fbi ats throughout the country has

played an important role in helping to keep the crime rates low and to keep americans safe. the fbi and the justice department worked hand in hand with us to make great strides more effective. fraud prevention and enforcement. and in the last congress i worked hard with republican and democratic senators to craft and pass the enforcement recovery act, the most expansive part of our legislation in more than a decade. we enacted important provisions as well as the affordable care act and wall street reform legislation. and i must say, director, i'm pleased to see the fbi has greatly increased the number of agents investigating fraud, as dawning the advantage of recovering money, but it also has to have a great deterrent equity effect. these new law, new agents and laws have led to record

recoveries and increased convictions. and i commend the fbi for also continuing to combat corruption. we should pass common sense bipartisan legislation like the fighting fraud to protect taxpayers act and the public corruption prosecution act to give you more tools to fight this. my voice is still working with all the pause in here. i will yield to senator grassley. >> chairman, thank you. director mueller, thank you for coming. the chairman paid tribute to police week, so i won't repeat those words, but i certainly agree with everything that the chairman said. it's been six months since our last hearing on the housekeeping matter. the fbi has been improving response time to our requests for information, but there's

still too long of a wait for some written responses. and yesterday afternoon we received some answers to questions for the record from six months ago when the director testified. i want to know what efforts the fbi has undertaken to investigate the grave national security leaks recently revealed in the operation in yemen. a national security leak has unfortunately become the norm with far too much sensitive information being leaked about ongoing operations. they are dangerous and have consequences. they threaten sensitive sources and methods and endanger life and complicate relationships with our allies. so i hope to hear from the director what the fbi is doing to investigate that leak and bring people to justice. next there are a couple pressing national security policy matters that we need to address in the

senate as the director pointed out in written testimony, the fiza amendment act expires at the end of the year. this national security tool needs to be reauthorized, and i need to hear about pushing that reauthorization. the law enforcement act is important. we have been waiting patiently for the administration to put forth a proposal with necessary fixes to ensure the going dark problem is addressed. this needs to be addressed in a correct manner. there's a lot of misinformation on this issue floating around. the sooner we have a proposal the sooner we can work to misspell the misconceptions. for starters, it is not a fan for the government to take over the internet or other mediums. it involves compliance with valid, lawfully issued court orders. simply, it is about ensuring that when a court issues an

order, law enforcement can obtain the information the court authorizes. i want the director to give us the status on this proposal and when the administration plans to send something up to the hill. another critical national security issue to address is cyber security. the house has passed four separate bills in this area. there are a number of other bills pending before the senate. while a lot of attention has been focused on differences between these bills, the proposals do have much in common. all the proposals recognize the need to strengthen the cyber security defenses. where they differ is how to do it. so i hope the director can fill us in on concerns that i have with proposals that create new bureaucracies to deal with cyber security. i will ask the director about the danger of compartmentalizing

information and whether such efforts will lead to reconstituting wall between national security and criminal matters. aside from national security, the fbi continues to handle a significant caseload of traditional criminal matters. one matter of concern is the recent report in "the washington post" about a number of cases where individuals may have been convicted based upon phony fbi crime lab reports. this issue dates back to the 1990s when i conducted oversight work on the fbi crime lab, when they spent a million dollars to settle with a whistleblower, build a new lab, i'm interested in what is concerning me is the recent reports indicate that the justice department reviewed the cases, may have been incomplete in the defendants in cases may not have been notified about

problem. it is troubles, however what is more troubling is that it appears the justice department never made public the findingses of the report nor does it appear the findings were reported to congress. given the high-profile problems with disclosing es skull up terror evidence and serious misconduct by the fbi and doj officials in the prosecution of senator stevens, this report has raised a number of questions. i want to hear from the director what he has done as part of this review and what is being done to address these cases. time permitting there are a number of other topics. i remained concerned that whistleblowers at the fbi face retaliation in ladies clearing their names. just yesterday we received written responses from the director's last appearances in

the cases of turner and colvus. they protected whistle blowing nearly ten years in the turner case and nearly four for colbus. obviously, i'm disappointed in the answers to answer the basic question as to when the matters come to an end and are chalk full of legalese. they do nothing to bring closure to these matters, which i consider a black eye for the bureau. one response state that is the bureau cannot answer because of litigation. no, the fbi continue to appeals the case. at some point the fbi needs to hone up to the retaliation and end these cases. that's something within the director's power. something he could and should do immediately. finally, i want to thank the director for his candor in answering one of my written

questions about the fbi's attempt to overclassify a memorandum provided to us. in a rare admission of fault, the written questions noted that the fbi erroneously stamped a memo to the congress as, quote/unquote, sensitive security information under the code of federal regulations. at first glance the stamp apeeshs to limit disclosure of the memo. how far, he closer looked and revealed the white house was using the authority reserve for the administrator of tsa. we in congress understand the need to appropriately classify information. this was an example of the cynical classification materials. i'm happy that the fbi honed up to this task or occasion, but worry it could signal a problem. i look forward to addressing these topics. thank you very much. >> thank you. please go ahead, sir. >> good morning and thank you,

chairman lehigh and senator grassley and members of the committee. i want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today and to thank you for your continued support for the men and women of the fbi. as you pointed out, the bureau has undergone unprecedented changes in the recent years. we have worked on preventing emerging terrorist threats, which are more diverse than ten years ago. we also face increasingly complex threats to our nation's cyber security as nations stayed active, organized criminal groups and hackers for hire are stealing research from america's colleges, america's companies and the american agencies. we must also combat investment fraud, health care fraud, mortgage fraud, that is undermining the world's financial system and victimized homeowners, investors and

taxpayers. crime may be down nationwide, mr. chairman, but gang violence plays in far too many neighborhoods. to combat the threats, we are in the bureau relying on the private sectors more than ever. throughout the efforts, the fbi remains firmly committed to carrying out our mission while protecting the civil liberties we serve. let me begin with a threat from terrorism, which does and still remains our top priority. al qaeda is decentralized, but the group is committed to high-profile attacks against the west as we confirm from the document seized from osama bin ladin a year ago. meanwhile, al qaeda affiliates in the arabian peninsula represent the top counter terrorism threat to the nation. apa had a number of attacks on

the united states in 2010 and 2009. we are looking into explosive devices that have been used in the past. we almost remain concern for home grown violent extremists. this individuals have no profile. their motives are disticket to make them difficult to find and difficult to stop. let me turn now to counter intelligence. while we still confront traditional espionage, today's spies are student, researchers, business people and the operators of front companies. they seek not only government secrets but inside property and insider information from government, businesses and american yoouchbts. >> we are seeing an increased threat when employees use legitimate secrets for the other

country. of course, this counter attack is now emerging with the cyber threat. today more sensitive data is stored on computer networks. our adversaries find it as effective or even more effective to steal secrets through cyber intrusions. we in the fbi have built up a substantial expertise to address the cyber threat here at home and abroad. we have cyber squads in each of the 56 office now with 100,000 technicians and specialists. they cover the globe to also assist in addressing this threat. finally, the national cyber investigative task force brings together 20 law enforcement military and intelligence agencies to stop current and predict future cyber attacks. next let me address our efforts to combat financial crimes. the fbi and its partners continue to focus on the

financial executive who is have competed securities and other frauds. from 2011 there are more than 254 executives charged with corporate fraud. last year alone fbi investigations fell to over 1100 convictions for mortgage fraud. in addition, in the past four years we have troupeled to four. health care spending currently makes up 18% of our nation's total economy, which presents an attractive target to criminals. so much so we lose tens of billions of dollars each year to health care fraud. as of two weeks ago, the fbi and the justice department continued to bring a record number of cases involving hundreds of millions of dollars in medicare

fraud. since their inception, medicare force operations in nine locations have charged more than 1,300 defendants to collectively build the medicare program to more than $4 billion. crime on our streets remains as much of a threat to our overall connection to terrorism or cyber crime. the most recent report does indicate -- as we all know, this does not represent every community. there are some towns that have swint crime and continue to pose a problem. we also continue to confront organized crime, but today's organized crime offers multi-billion schemes. everything from human trafficking to health care fraud and from computer intrusions to

interlek chul theft. through our child abduction teams, the innocence lost national committee outreach programs and its workers are making the world a safer place for our children. ranking member grassley, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the fbi's priorities. the trfgs the fbi obtained over the last ten years wouldn't be possible without your support. and i would be happy to answer the questions you might have.

director, before we came in here, you and i discussed the question of forensics. most recently you reported there are potential errors in here and financial analysis, forensic experts reviewed hundreds of these in the '80s and the '90s, but many of these mistakes were not disclosed to the people or the defense attorneys. "the post" reported the review was very narrow and the evidence in the cases were not retested despite questions about techniques and live personnel.

we have had a lot of attention in these committees, both of the party predecessors said the problems have been corrected, but what actions have been taken? do you have a way to ensure that all questionable evidence is retested? do you -- are there ways to make sure that notifications are obeyed so that nobody remains in jail based on faulty evidence? >> mr. chairman, there was a review done previously back that culminated in 2004, which covered the lab that was headed by the justice department, and of course we participated and cooperated in that review. of that, 13 examiners subject of that review, only one was a hair and fiber analyst. and upon indications that some of those examiners who exam particular hair may have

overstated the import of their examinations, the justice department with ourselves contributing or going back to look at what persons may have been covered by these examiners, which cases may have had occasion where the examiners testified and did over state the import of their examinations. and then to do whatever notifications are appropriate given that review. at the point -- at this point in time we are not exactly sure what the universe will be, but we are working to determine that the universe will make certain that we go back and identify those cases that need further review. the only thing i would add is that in 1996, prior to 1996 we did not have dna, but in 1996 we developed a dna examination, which thereafter was done in conjunction with any hair and fiber examination that we had

conducted. >> it's not just the dna, and i realize we get new techniques coming up all the time. i just want to make sure that we are doing the best possible way, because if -- whether they are state or federal prosecutors, if they are relying on something from the fbi in the testimony, and the courts are, we don't want to come back later on to say, wait a minute, this just didn't work because that's going to put in doubt prosecutions and everything else everywhere else. so i introduced criminal justice and forensic science format for the nationwide forensics reformat including research and standards. would that be something that might help? >> well, i know that there is discussion about standardization

in forensics. we have some substantial role in that now. and my expectation is whatever the administration comes out with, and i know it is looking at certain proposals, my expectation is we would continue to play a substantial role in contributing to the standards when it comes to forensics work. >> all right. i'm sure you will agree with -- i'm sure you agree -- i'm sure you agree with me that we want -- the government has experts testify iing. that that testimony, especially on things that are of the scientific nature, have the best test possible. >> absolutely. >> the questions of eyewitness, things like that, is all subjective, but there are certain things that should be objective and we shouldn't have

to go back afterward and say, did that really work that way? i'm sure you agree with that. >> i do agree with that. and to the extent that forensic testing, such as dna when it comes on is far more specific and accurate, we immediately adopted in this particular case, we have to go back to look at the universe of cases that pre-dated the use of the dna to determine whether additional notifications need to be made. >> please give this committee posting as you go on with that. >> yes, sir. >> you and i talked yesterday before the national peace officers memorial service, there were a number of police officers that were killed. in the nationwide, 122 in 2009, 154 in 2010, 163 in 2011. this is a very troubling trend. i continue working on the bullet-proof vest program.

i have been told by police departments all over the country that has saved a lot of lives. i'm hopeful this committee will reauthorize it tomorrow. i also understand the domestic violence situations are opposing special risks to officers saying, we want to reauthorize the womens act here in the senate. the house is now looking on it. can you think of things that we could be doing here that might help? >> let me get to the things being done. >> i'm sure you awe agree with the bullet-proof vest. >> the bullet-proof vest program has samed a number of lives. and the earlier discussion about making the officers wear them, i think that discussion is on the mend, given the benefits everybody sees from the use of the vests two of the additional things we are undertaking is we

have exchanged firearms for our agents to reflect that many of the confrontations are closer than they were in the past. and often state and local law enforcement follow our lead when it comes to firearms practices. secondly, we have what we call a violent offender alert system. with an agent or officer stopping somebody, when they look to determine their history, there will be an indication that that individual, that suspect or that person that they have detained has a violent history. and so it will put on -- try to put the detaining officer or agent on alert if this is something special to be aware of. >> i'll accept your invitation to come down to see the new firearms training. >> yes.

>> lastly, you have testified before for the need for the law enforcement to keep pace with the communication technology and so on. we have the communication system with law enforcement that i drafted back in the '90s, someone suggested updating it. but in press reports the fbi is seeking to require internet service providers and other online services to make products available to surveillance. and there have been recently published reports -- even though the administration is setting up here, can i be expecting a specific proposal for the fbi or the administration in the near future? >> i believe you would. i do believe that characterization is a distortion of what our needs are as was

pointed out by ranking member grassley. we will get, go to court to make the appropriate showing, have probable cause that there is a need to capture communications of a particular individual and judge will issue at order. what we are seeking is the ability to enforce that order and be able to obtain communications. we have legislation that will assure that when we get the appropriate court order, that those individuals, those individual companies do advocate the capacity to respond to that order. >> that will clear up a lot of confusion about seeing the proposal from the administration. i would urge the administration to get that before us. senator grassley. >> i had a lead into my first question. i'm going to skip it, but it goes back to exactly t