constituent issues. and you know, clearly it comes . out, consumers get confuse. have a lot of questions. have some problems. i get irritated sometimes on the other side. i feel like there's an embraci, of these problems rather than a constituent service altitude to fix the problems.an and when we've tried, we've had good success.an and sod i just wanted to tell you, i appreciate that. i also just wanted to say that the minority staff has done a ,e district by district, the benefits of the health care reform law in all the districtsi in the country and it's just se wonderful to see how the number of people that in my district, 283,000 people in my district, including 51,000 children and n 120,000 women, now have health insurance that covers preventivo

services without any copays, nsn coinsurance or deductibles. say needless to say, that's huge.y d >> very good news. >> up to 36,000 children in my district with pre-existing cond conditions canit no longer be nd denied coverage by health insurers. it's just aan lotsd and lots ofs good news including the new co medicaid enrollees that are being covered. i did have a question. we werute talking about the stas that have expanded medicaid and have not, 26 district of columbia have expanded medicaid coverage under the affordable care act. t and in those states, medicaid ie seeing great success. enrollment has increased substantially. and the percentage of population without insurance has declined dramatically. slavin, sking you, mr. if you have seen studies that compare the decline in the

number of uninsured in states id that did and did not expand , i medicaid? >> yes, i have seen those stud. studies. >> can you tell me what you yout found? >> the states that have expanded medicaid, to get back to you one the exact figure, i've seen rae significantly lower rates of uninsured than those states thad did not expand medicaid. >> but we've seen a decline in any case, in -- isn't it in alld states? >> a bigger decline in states that have expanded medicaid. >> and have you seen the estimates about the thunder of americans that would receive if health care coverage if all 50 e states expanded medicaid?the sie do you know the size of this ie estimate? >> i believe that it's an addi additional 5 million.'m if i'm not mistaken. >> okay.an thank you. andd in that is the case, thent i believe that it is, then this is really an appalling number. w 5 million americans who would h receive health care coverage, io republican governors and state s legislators took theim simple sg of expanding medicaid.it is

obviously, good for people when more people have health insura insurance. but mr. . slavin, what about health care providers? how does if medicaid expansion help them? >> so my information is that anecdotal but it appears that the dramatic reduction or significant reduction in that uncompensated care, it appears t thathi this has been a very goo thing for providers. >> and this committee has spenta the last three years looking for some affordable care act relatec scandal and despite all their concern they have systematically ignored an ongoing health care e tragedy that dereliction of dutc by republican governors around the country who refuse to expans medicaid. for those who have not been following this closely, the forb affordable care act provides ung 100% federal funding for the first three years to states to expand medicaid coverage.ns of tolo millions of low-income

americans, right?ect. >> that's correct. >> and yetyet, for some reasonv republican governors and does dozens of states have refused to expand to low-nick individuals in their state, is that correct? >> correct. >> thisscan e to me is a real s. the expansion doesn't cost states a dime. it provides quality, affordablel coverage for millions of americans working hard just to get by. yet, some republican governors and state legislators are deliberately refusing to provide coverage to millions of uninsured americans. and mr. chairman, that, it seems to many me, is an issue the i subcommittee should look into and i yield back. >> now recognize ms. blackman for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you for being with us today. overseeing this implementation and getting to the bottom of a o lot of the questions, i think, is very important. do continuing to do our due

diligence and i know that englan several people have mentioned the new england journal of medicine article from last week. the health reform and changes in health insurance coverage. f my friend across the aisle have wanted to tout that as being something to their point.hat i think that it's important, ghg though, to go in here and look at how the authors came to the i conclusion that 5.2% more had a insurance. that there was a decline in those without insurance from september 2013 to3 june of 2014. and then the authors mentioned the limitations of their study.e they said that the study did nop distinguish between persons enrolling for the first time and those who were changing their enrollment and i really wonder how many of those that had to buy more expensive policies, new policies, that were obama care

compliant? how did that affect the number and the improvement and access o to care by asking two questionse first, did the survey pa participants identify a personay doctor and second, did the survey participants report ing difficulty paying medical billst well, it seems to me, a more rt important outcome measure would be whether a person was actually able to see the doctor. because in our district, we hea from people.le, they they can't get access to the doctor. they have access to the queue because they have a card but they can't get access to the r. doctor so while my colleagues cs across the aisle talk about how many people have insurance, i would like to remind everyone that having an insurance card is same as having medical care. and ian continue to hear from people in tennessee who lost th their health plan.ei l theyike liked it. can't they can't keep it. i hear from people that have noe been able to keep their doctor f

because of the narrow networks in obama care.i hear f i hear from people who go to the doctor and need a test but can't get the test because they're copays and their coinsurance are too high.high they can't afford .it. this stuff is too expensive to t afford. and finally, we're hearing from some of our tennessee insuranceo carriers they're going to have n 19% increase in the health insurance premiums in 2015.201 so it's kind of like adding sult insult too injury. you've got this stuff. you can't use it because it's too expensive to afford. the copays are too high. you have an insurance card but you can't get into to see the do doctor andct you're having to wait. i don't understand whyand my co colleagues across the aisle continue to defend this thing but today we're shiftingng our focus to oversight and the way that taxpayer dollars. i remind everyone, taxpayer dollars are paying for this and the people don't like it.

on january 1, 2014, hhs certified to congress that the d american health benefit exchanges the marketplace, were verifying their applicants for i advanced paymentsng of the tax f credits, cost sharing reductions were indeed eligible. however, the gao secret shopper investigation found that 11 of f 12 secret shoppers were able to obtain health insurance and qualify for premium tax creditss using fictitious identitieds ang fraudulent documents. for the benefit of my colleagues let me talk about what a secret shopper program does. when i had my marketing business we would run secret shopper programs for malls and chambers and you identify where your problems are and then you get yd thisen there and you clean themm up. the problem is, the system allows fraud.

if you have 11 of 12 that in something is wrong, that's a th problem. the president has made multipler itunes lateral changes. and unilateral changes and we'ra here to learn about the contracting changes that took ac place at cms with the botched implementation of this law. we're looking at the gao study.. this thing is not much better. let's talk about this contract. so in january they awarded a $9t million contract, correct?ba >> correct. >> now they say it's ballooned to almost $175 million, is that correct? >> you canti answer. wh >> if that report says it but ie don't agree with that characterization but that's wha. the report says. >> i'lli wi submit the rest of

questions. i yield back. >> thank you.though they just called and we'll go through ms. elmer's questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you for being with us. i'd like to go back to a little bit of discussion you had with > my colleague from t ohio, mr. er johnson. i know you made some comments tt where you pointed out in the real wrorld and things are much more realistic and that o be ideologically, many times things seem like they're going to be better than they are. i would say to you, sir, that that's exactly why i ended up running for office, being a bea nurse, because i did see and my husband as a doctor, saw that the plan that was going forward was not going to be realistic.he and i think we have learned ovee time, that that is the case. and and this there were many

promises made that have not been kept. well intended, but not true for the american people. so i do, again, i share with yoe that same sentiment but realize, too, that that is why we feel so strongly about this issue.l so r you did also have an exchange with mr. johnson on the cost of healthcare.gov. and what it should have cost. you were reluctantly did not answer the question of, you being a billion dollars. is a billion dollars too much for the implementation thus farl >> emso, thank congresswoman. i've not seenwo a study yet whis looks at what the appropriate i cost for building the entire sym healthcare.gov system should be but, of course, i do acknowledge that our colleagues at the jao

pointed out that there were sole absolutely inefficiencies and waste in the way the contract e was managed so at the very leas we know there was some.i w i would hesitate to say, though, that it was entirely waste because there was a really significant set of systems buile that i think those systems had significant long-term value for the country. >> you know, there again, it h gets back to that sameat issue what is realistic and what is achievable and you know, simply throwing money at it and looking back and in hindsight, to termin determine what dide work and didn't, i think we all are ence. learning from this experience so that, of course, has having va't value. i don't know how you k measure but the american taxpayers are still on the hook for this. and that's, again, why we are ee taking the approach we are whis is, when is it going to be gh? enough? when are we going toe g achievee goals at a cost effective i want measure? i want to look into t some of t

issues with the security u breaches. are you aware at this time, of any problems that the website -- from the building of the an website, and that there are still concerns? are you aware of any right now? >> so, there have been no successful malicious attacks. at and certainly, to the best of mf knowledge, no one's individual data has ever been compromised from the healthcare.gov website '. >> so to theto best of your knowledge and just based on thee answer that you gave, you are t not seeing that there were any related breaches in th car healthcare.gov or travelinge. ed through the federal exchanges a that you would consider a h? security breach? >> not seen any malicious attacks that have beenat successful and we've not seen anybody personal information in any way get compromised. >> what isompr the definition o successful breach? >> i'm not trying to be cagey,

but other than to say that nobody has successfully penetrated the security system to the best of my knowledge, congresswoman. >> are you aware of any companies building, operating or otherwise working on federal exchanges, obtaining access to information that they should not have? anyone who is outside of the system or working on that have? >> not to my knowledge. >> and information on e.enrolle or applicants, none there as well? >> no, notppli to my knowledge. >> and are you aware of any >> e changes to site y protocols of standards to address breaches to access information?in >> i think it's fair to say that the security team does continuous monitoring and makes chaengs and puts in new patches as new -- as different security things are found out about in the industry and so forth so it

is just a continuous monitoring. >> can we obtain that information over time?in any of the changes and updates y taken place for the committee. >> sure. let me figure out what i can s. share. i obviously don't want all the w things our security team does to be well understood by the wrong people but i want to make sure e you get the information you ion need. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> they have called us out.ed thank you for your testimony. members will have a few days to get other questions to you and we would appreciate a quick and thorough and honest response. >> mr. chairman, can i move to e strike the last word briefly?y? >> sure. >> i just want to, dr. burgess s mentioned that hhs didn't respond to the committee's n request for analysis of its legal to make payments in connection with the risk ents quarter's program.k i was told -- i've just been told that hhs did respond to the request and provided response to the committee on june 18th, 2014. and in the response, they also inclued a legal analysis so i

wanted to clarifyrify for the rd and i wanted to also make sure that if dr. burgess or you or the committee staff didn't get that we'll get another copy to i you. >> dr. burgess? >> i did not, in fact, receive it and would be anxious to look at it and see if it answers the question as it was asked. mr. chairman if i could have the indulgence of one brief , follow-up? >> yes. >> mr. slavin, we had a lot of questions about when this thing went live, the back end part ofh the system was not built.ystem is it now built and available and ready to use? the part that pays providers? >> the part that pace the that issuers, issuers are getting paid today. >> how about the doctors and hospitals? >> the doctors and hospitals get paid by the health planning noth by the exchange, not by the marketplace. >> so the back end part of thea system is up and fully functionu something. >> no, no, no. the back end p part of the systt is going through continuous tody releases. today we're paying the issuers

on an estimated basis. a coming release this year wherebs the end of this year where they'll begin to get paid at a policy level pay sbis and next year continued automation will occur to tie everything into thw back end of cms's systems. >> have the right people been paid the right amount of money? these are taxpayer dollars. >> what we'll do is follow-up with some questions. do >> okay. >> mr. woods, we'll probably reconvene and this will take us to 11:30 so we'll be in brief recess until 11:30 and then we'll be back. thank you very much. this reckon convenience our committee. i'll introduce the witness on the second panel for today's hearing. mr. william t woods, the

director with acquisition and sourcing management team if the government and accountability office and he provides overall direction for gao's review of contract and activities and events and civilian agencies. i will now swear in the witness. you're aware this committee is holding investigative hearing and when doing so has the practice of taking testimony under oath. do you have any objections to testifying under oath? >> none whatsoever. >> the rules of thousands and committee you're entitled to be advised by council. do you need to be advised by council during your testimony today? >> no, i do not. >> in that case, rooise and i'l swear you in. [ witness sworn ] >> your now under oath and entitled to the penalties. you may now give a five minute summary of your written statement. >> thank u, mr. chairman. ranking members, it's a pleasure to be here this afternoon to

talk to you about healthcare.gov and the work that we've done looking into that system. when the went was launched in october of last year, there were, of course, a number of problems and we got a lot of requests from the congress to review what happened and why. those requests came from both the house and senate from both sides of the aisle. we got requests from committee chairs from ranking members. and congressmen across the board. we decide to combine all the request and conduct a body of work that addressed all the issues that were raised in those various requests. we have a number of engagements under way to address all of those issues. one that we'll be talking about

today is contracts but let me just mention, we have one that is nearing completion on privacy and security concerns with respect to the website. and we also have a report that is on track for issuance later this year on information technology management. that report will look at the use of best practices in the development of the information technology system. but i'm going to be talking today about our first report that was issued publicly released yesterday. and that is on the contracting aspects of healthcare.gov. and i'm going to be talking about our three objectives. the first thing we reviewed was the acquisition planning by cms for the website. secondly, we looked at the oversight of cost schedule and performance of that system.

and then thirdly, we looked at a range of contractor performance issues with respect to healthcare.gov. we focused on the largest tax orders in contracts that were involved here. our report mentions that cms had spent about 840 million for development of the system. and that was through march. obviously, the spending has continued and that number is likely higher today. but as of the time that we completed our work, it was $840 million. and we focused on the largest. we reviewed in depth, two task orders and one contract. briefly, those task orders are one, two, first to cgi federal for development of the federally-facilitated marketplace.

that's basically the website itself, as well as some back office systems, that support the enrollment process. the financial management process. planned management, et cetera. we also look add a task awarded to qssi. that's for the data hub. the data hub is a system that interfaces with other agencies. there are roles that other federal agencies need to play to make the system work. the internal revenue service, the department of homeland security to shaverify immigrati status. and the hub data system is that system that allows for communication among all of those agencies. and then the third contract that we looked at is one with -- that was awarded on a sole source

basis by c mchl s in january of this year. -- cms by january of this year for continued development of that federally-facilitated marketplace. before i get to our specific findings, i wanted to make an observation that there really are some common threads that run through all the work that we did here. and those threads are, first of all, complexity. this was an enormously complex undertaking. as i said, there were lots of federal agencies involved. a number of states involved. industry partners. health care plans. lots of players. there were also lots of systems that had to interact with each other. and that added to the complexity. another thread that runs through and you'll see that when we get to the find information a moment, is the pressure of

deadlines. the affordable care act itself set january 1st, 2014, as the date when the enrollment took affect. the department of health and human services backed up from that january deadline and set a october 1st, 2013, time for when the system needed to be ready to go. when they could throw the switch, the go-live date, that sort of thing, they needed to have things in place by october 1st, of 2013. and that drove a lot of the decisions that were made by cms. and then the third thread that runs through all of our findings is the changing requirements. things were constantly evolving. which made it difficult not only for cms personnel to keep things on track, but also, for the contractors to keep up with those changes.

some of those were anticipated changes. things they knew going in. they did not yet know, but others were -- they were learning as they went along. let me get into the specific findings in the three areas that i mentioned. in the area of -- >> could you summarize? >> you're already a couple of minutes over and we want to ask you a number of questions so if you could summarize. >> sure. in the area of planning our bottom line assessment is simple yet sobering. that is that cms began an undertook the development of the healthcare.gov system without adequate planning, despite facing a number of challenges that increased both the level of risk and the need for oversight.

in the oversight area, we saw increasing costs across the instruments that we looked at. both of the task orders experienced cost increases. and the new contract awarded also saw cost increases. those cost increases were due to a number of factors as i said. some requirements were unknown at the time they awarded these instruments. when those costs became known, when the requirements became known, the costs increased. the cost schedule and performance issues were exacerbated by inconsistent and sometimes absent oversight. and then in the third area, about contracting performance, we saw primarily in the cgi federal task order, an

increasing sense of frustration on the part of cms of the contractors inability to be able to comply with contract requirements and meet deliverable schedules. that frustration grew to the point where they decide not to renew the contract and moved to a different solution which is to award the contract to assensure. those are our three findings and we have a series of recommendations to address some of the issues and i'll be delighted to get into some of the specifics of that as the hearing moves forward. >> thank you, mr. woods, we appreciate your thoroughness and your candor. as you described things like inconsistent and absent oversight weaknesses and the lack of adherence top compliance requirements compounded by acquisition planning challenges.

and when mr. slavin testified earlier he said fortunately or unfortunately the gao report wasn't news. so as you go through this, with regard to the oversight did people within cms and co know that these problems were brewing? >> we saw some indication that the problems were known, particularly with the cgi issue that i mentioned earlier. that was well documented what their concerns were. other aspects, though, mr. chairman, were not quite as visible. and let me point out one area. we are found a number of instances and our count was about 40, where changes were being made to the contract requirements at the direction of people that did not have the authority to do that. >> within cms? >> within cms.

these were largely. >> when you say did not have the authority, do you mean they did not discuss these with mr. cohen or ms. tavner? >> the only person within cms that has authority to change the contract in a manner that increases the government's obligation is the contracting officer. >> who was that? >> the contracting -- >> sorry? >> who was that? >> i don't have the name right at my fingertips. >> what i'm wondering here is do you know if -- what the problems of the website, it took longer to develop it. security wasn't a question. people had problems signing up. and with inconsistent or absent oversight so in some cases you're saying there were actions taken without authorization. several dozen of these? >> right. >> so people were making change orders an that was leaving problems? but there was also absent oversight so some people in charge were not meeting or pay attention or monitoring this monitoring this contract or monitoring some things and

making the wrong decisions? was it both or one or the other? >> combination of things. there are a number of people with different roles to play. there's the contracting officer be there's also, on the program side, a governance board review process. and that process was designed to provide high-level management oversight. and what we found there was that that process simply did not work as intended. >> we also had heard there was a mckin zee report that made it clear they would not meet their deadlines. did they know within cms the deadlines couldn't be met and under the pressures which you had listed, such as the january 1 deadline or the complexity of this, did they know that this really wasn't ready for

primetime? >> we found some indication in the files that we reviewed that in the springtimeframe, the spring of 2013, estimates were made that federally-facilitated marketplace would only be 65% complete by the october 1st deadline. >> so they knew then in the spring. did they know that in august and september? >> there was the state of knowledge continued to progress from the spring through the end of the summer. and they became increasingly concerned that the deadline would not be met. one of the principal oversight is the functions and processes that we saw and that we were very concerned about is that there was supposed to be, according to the original schedule, an operational readiness review conducted in the spring of 2013. that operational readiness

review was moved from the spring to the fall, to september of 2013. just weeks before -- >> and when they did that review did they know it wasn't going to work? >> as i said, there was some end occasion in the files that they thought only 65% complete. >> so when ms. tavner -- >> the purpose of that operational readiness review is to either confirm that the system will work or find out what's wrong. and give it enough time to fix it. >> so when mr. cohen came before the committee, within days of the launch, and he said everything was going to be fine by october 1, what you're saying to this committee is, there was ample evidence to say that was not true? >> we saw some indication that there was progressively increasing knowledge that there were problems in meeting that launch date. >> and did mr. cohen know that? >> i don't know that.

>> either through lack of oversight, he should have known it or he knew it and reported this committee under oath that everything was fine on august 1 it would be ready for launch. what you're telling us, is there's ample evidence in what's reviewed that people within hhs knew it was not ready and people under oath told this committee something entirely different? >> yeah. i don't know what specific individuals knew or did not know. but we saw evidence in the files that we reviewed that there was knowledge within the agency that that the operational readiness was in jeopardy. >> thank you. i'm over time. >> this is an important issue. so you're saying that people within the agency knew that the website was not ready, correct? yes or no? >> we -- >> yes or no? do you think people in the agency knew that the website

would collapse on october 1st? yes or no. >> i can't speak to that. >> you don't have any indication from the files that people in the agency knew that the website would not work on october 1st? >> yes. we saw that. >> can you produce that to this committee, please? >> there was a series. >> can you produce it? >> absolutely. >> yes, ma'am. >> now, my next question, because ms. tavner and mr. cohen came in here and testified under oath, several days before, as the chairman has said, that the website would work. do you have evidence in your files that mr. cohen or mrs. tavner knew this website wouldn't work. >> no. not speak to the knowledge of any individual. >> in your opening statement, you're talked about some provisions the gao was coming up with to strengthen the website for some recommendations for privacy and security concerns. is that correct? >> well, this particular report

that was we're speaking to today, just deals with the contract. >> but you talked about. >> not for security and privacy. >> so you're not looking at privacy and security? >> other teams within gao are looking at that and that work -- >> are you aware of any security breaches in the website? yes or no. >> no, i'm not. >> okay. now, the gao made five recommendations. you referenced those in your opening statement to cms to avoid the mistakes that you had identified. is that correct? >> yes. >> and i js want to go through those recommendations because you said we should and i think it's important to know. the recommendations i think, are good recommendations but they're a little vague. and so, i'm going to ask you about each one of them. if you have specific details and then also i'm going to ask you, mr. woods, to supplement your testimony and provide to this committee and to cms specific details on each one of them

because i think it's important for the cms to actually be able to implement these recommendations. and our last witness said he agreed with the recommendations and he did want to implement them. so the first recommendation is that cms should take steps to assess the costs of the increase in costs of the continued development of healthcare.gov and the delays and functionality of the website. and develop a plan to mitigate those costs and delays. can you briefly give us a little more detail on what steps the gao believes cms should take to make those assessments? >> certainly. we did see cost increases in the contract. the current contract. >> so what steps do you think cms can take to rectify these problems? >> we think that they need to step back and identify the causes, the reasons why costs continue to increase in that particular contract.

>> okay. and do you have any thoughts what should be included in a mitigation plan? >> they need to make sure that costs are under control and schedules are met. >> the next thing the gao recommends that quality assurance surveillance plans and other oversight documents are collected and used to monitor contract performance. how can those documents be effectively used to monitor performance? >> the quality assurance surveillance plan is a standard document that's required in most efforts of this size. that provides a road map for how the agency, any agency, is going to oversee the contractor's performance. >> does the gao have thoughts on how it can be used to do that? >> yes. >> okay. if you can give us that information that would be great. i want to go through your other

recommendations. briefly, while i still have time. the gao also recommended that cms formalized existing guidance of the responsibilities of personnel assigned to oversight duties. so as i understand it, the roles and responsibilities were spelled out in some way. how would formalizing existing guidance prevent confusion about the responsibilities and authority going forward? >> this gets to the issue of unauthorized individuals making changes and when they learned of that, there was internal guidance provided to all of the people but that has not been institutionalized. it's not been made part of the permanent guidance. >> so they already have a way they're doing it. that just needs to be formalized. >> they just need to take the next step. >> perfect. you recommend getting staff direction on acquisition strategies and developing a process to ensure that acquisition strategies are completed on time. can you flesh that out a little

bit for us? >> that was a very important deficiency that we identified. there were a number of steps that cms took to expedite the rollout of healthcare.gov. but each of those individual steps added risk to the process. and the purpose of the plan of the acquisition strategy is to, first of all, identify those risks. to be able to come up with a plan to address them. and we found that that acquisition strategy was not prepared. >> so does gao have some ideas what this process could look like if done appropriately? >> the process is already in place. the regulations at hhs are very clear. in fact, there's a template. it just wasn't done. >> great. so they need to follow the existing one. >> perfect. last. you recommended ensuring that information technology projects add here to the requirements for

governance board approvals before proceeding with development. what exactly does that mean? what governing board are you referring to? what are the requirements and why did the board approval process fail the first time around with healthcare.gov? >> the agency had a system in place that provided for an oversight board to review the progress of the system. the problem that we found is that those governance board meetings were held with incomplete information and that decisions were not made as we would have expected to either approve, disapprove or make modifications in the -- >> what you're saying is once again this was a failure to follow the existing rules that they have? >> it was a process in place and they did not follow it. >> thanks for your indulgence mr. chairman. >> and now ms. elmerson from north carolina for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman and mr. woods for being with us today. you know, as i'm sitting here

listening to your report findings, i am incredibly amazed by the inefficiency that went forward with a plan of action that was in place. and i keep coming up with the same question of why? why were these steps taken? why was action taken the way that it was? why were there unauthorized individuals making decisions? but i think one of the most glares questions that i have based on your findings is that, and you use the word, that they expedite, you know, they took measures to expedite the rollout, that that added risk, obviously, and that that was a straight -- failed strategy, essentially. why in your opinion, based on your findings, did they stay with that october 1st rollout date when they knew, based on

what i'm listening to, that it was not going to be accurate and successful and that it would be a failure? >> well, the law itself, the affordable care act, set a hard deadline of january 1st, 2014. and they needed to have some period where consumers could determine their eligibility, look at plan available and make decisions about what plans they wanted to choose by that january 1st date. >> okay. so they stuck with the october 1st date knowing that their time was running out and that -- so now, this is me just, again, trying to process why they would go forward with something that obviously was not put together well and steps were taken. it wasn't an efficient system and yet, they were moving forward.

so based on your knowledge, they had to go forward with that october 1st date so that they could have the enrollee numbers that they were looking for by january 1st? regardless of the fact that it wasn't going to work? >> that's been cms's position. they needed to stick with that going forward. >> they had to stick with that date because they needed those numbers of individuals signing up, essentially? yes? >> they needed to comply to have a system in place by october 1st. by january 1st in order to comply with the affordable care act. >> okay. so i'm going to go back to some of the questions, also, on the tax surge. when the tax surge was implemented. to the best of our knowledge and based on your report findings, we understand that there was a, again, tech surge in october to fix the site after healthcare.gov failed the october 1st launch.

based on your investigation, what actions did cms take in october to fix the site? >> in october, they continued to work with cgi federal. but the level of frustration reached the point in november of 2013, where they sent, yet another letter detailing the shortcomings of the contractor asking for corrective action plan. cgi responded to that and clearly disagreed with cms's assessment as that point. >> so they were disagreeing with it. was cgi -- there were other contractors involved, too, is that correct? >> many others. >> but particularly it was cgi where the frustration was? where the disconnect was? >> they were responsible for the heart of the system, if you

will. and that's where the most of the dollars were in terms of contract expenditures. >> so to that point, based on the fact that cgi was the main contract for that, were there other contracts or was there contract extended? was -- were there any new issued contracts based on the frustration that cms had? >> the cgi contract had been extended earlier until february of 2014. >> and that was before october 1st? >> i believe that was before october 1st. >> so it was already 12e7bded before october 1st. >> that is correct. >> okay. so then to that point, were there any other, again, getting back to this, were there any other contractors that were selected, thoughs that cgi was not necessarily doing what was

necessary for the repair of the website? >> the only contract that i'm aware of is the new one to continue with the development of the federally-facilitated marketplace. >> and can you refresh my memory on what that actually took place? >> when that new contract went forward? >> january of 2014. >> that was january, okay. mr. speaker, sorry, mr. chairman, i've gone over on my time and i apologize. thaumg, thank you, mr. woods. >> thank you. now, i'm going to recognize the gentleman from virginia, mr. griffith, for five minutes. >> thank you very much for being here today. the report indicated that they did not engage in effective planning or oversight and what do you recommend they do in the

future to make sure they have proper planning and oversight? they apparently dropped the ball. >> they have the tools in place. >> okay. >> one of the primary tools is the strategic plan and an acquisition strategy is what it's called. an actually a template in the hh regulations for each of the areas that needs to be addressed. and fundamentally, it's a tool designed to identify the risks that the agency is undertaking. and to be able to come up with a plan to be able to mitigate those risks. but they did not follow it. so the tools are there. they did not use the tools that were there. and. >> let me ask you an open-ended question. because i think it's important that we get this perspective frth from time to time. and that would be, out of the report, what have we not asked you about that we probably should have asked you about or the people watching this at home, something this they ought to know about your report that you haven't already covered in

your testimony here today? >> well, one thing that comes to mind is the next enrollment period. i think people are wondering, are we going to experience similar problems or are we in better shape? and that's why we have one of our recommendations that's focused on the current contract with ascensure where we've seen cost growth and we think the agency needs to make an assessment of why that cost growth has occurred. whether they are, in fact, on and whether there's risk of the 2015 enrollment period. >> you mean the cost growth? what was that phrase you used? >> cost increases. and we have somewhat of a disagreement with the agency about the term "cost growth" and that's why i'm reluctant to use it. their position is that any cost increase since about april of this year is totally based on

new requirements. so it's unfair to call that cost growth. our position is that when you look before that, when they initially awarded that contract at an estimated value of $91 million, and no it's at $175 million, that the agency needs to make an assessment about why those costs increased from the 91 to 175. and let me just say -- that's not the end of it. there are -- that contract continues in place today. our numbers are dated in terms of, you know, we completed our audit work a couple of months ago so costs on that particular contract are almost certainly higher today than they were at the time that we completed our audit work. and we think the agency needs to make a assessment about why costs continue to grow.

>> well, i think they do as well and i appreciate you raising that point. and i had kind of interesting, it would seem to me some of those new requirements are probably because it didn't work the first time around. wouldn't you agree? >> enhancements to the system. they're constantly changing and trying to make improvements to the system. the ones that early on, i think you're right that those are related to the inability of the system to function as intended originally, but the agency tells us the more recent cost increases are due to enhancem t enhancements. >> all right. well, i appreciate that, and i appreciate your testimony today, and i'm happy to yield my last 55 seconds to whomever might want it. >> thank you. thank you. i do have one follow-up question, and it has to do with the conversation you were just having with my colleague. when we're talking about the cost increases, you had

mentioned that the enhancements are what has been cited as the reasoning. my question for you is, did cms get congressional approval for the additional funding? or spending i guess i should say? >> i'm not aware of what that process was at all. >> so to your knowledge, based on the report, you did not see any effort put forward to come to congress for additional funding for spending? >> i can't speak to that. we didn't see it. that wasn't part of our review. >> thank you, mr. woods, and thank you to my colleague for yielding. >> thank you be. i'm going to do a second round. just a follow-up here, are you saying they're not analyzing why the contract with accenture is growing in cost? >> we don't think they have done that fully yet. >> this original contract, which was a cost plus contract, who

signed that contract? who's responsible for that? >> those contracts are signed by the contracting officer, and as i said, i don't have that name. >> do those have to be approved by mr. cohen? you know, in the chain? >> i don't know. >> is that something your study encompassed to find that paper trail or look at that? >> we did not review that, no. >> well, let me ask you, too. you talked about the pressure deadlines. january 1, 2014. but a number of delays were put into place. employer mandate. early retirement issue, enforcement of canceled plans. individual mandate to the shop plan. should the rollout have been delayed as well? >> i'm not sure about that, but your observation about delays is accurate. when they realize that they would not be able to be fully functional by october 1st, they did make some tradeoffs and

pushed projects that they thought they were initially going to be able to completely october 1st, push that off into the future. and the small business program that you mentioned is one of them. the financial management module was also pushed off until a later date. >> now, did it -- none of those delays caused a delay in the website? none of those -- many of those things i mentioned, they didn't cause a delay in the website readiness? there were several other changes internally, which were one of the factors in delay in the website readiness. am i correct? >> well, the website was launched. i'm not sure -- >> but you had said a number of decisions made during it, i guess it was 2013 to 2012 were part of the complexity. you mentioned a couple main things. one, there wasn't proper oversight of the contract, secondly, a number of internal changes were made by someone who didn't have the authority to make those changes. >> that's correct.

>> so do you know, or can you find out for us, in terms of someone making these changes, who approved the decision for them to make these changes, or who gave that person the authority to be in the position to make those changes? do you have that information? >> there are a number of people working with the contractors on a day-to-day basis. and the 40 instances of changes or direction to the contract was made by multiple individuals. some of these were technical people. as i said, working side by side with the contractor. some of them were more senior officials. all of the changes, though, ultimately were ratified by the person with authority to do that. and that is the contracting officer. >> but what -- did it go to level of miss tavener or mr. cohen? >> i don't know. >> is that something your records could review? this is a follow-up to what miss degette was asking as well.

we have to know if your records show or if you can find out for us. it's very important to know this, if they knew or should have known in terms of approving these changes or being aware that the website wasn't ready. or, well, let me ask that part. did you have any information on those? >> as i said, we'll certainly review our materials and provide an answer to that question. >> it comes to this point. this committee, members of each side of the aisle has different points of view with regard to health care reform. that's fine, part of what makes our nation great. people have differences of opinion, they move forward on that. there are certain standards within a committee i think we should be unified in understanding, if someone comes before this committee under oath and claims that something is ready to roll on october 1st, everybody should be able to sign up, knowing full well that it's not, it's either incompetence,

it's dereliction of duty, it's sloppiness, it's lack of supervision oversight, or it's perjury to this committee. it's perjury in terms of making claim they know is not true, or making claim they have no business of making. the only answers to question like is the website ready october 1st are yes, no, or i don't know. anything beyond that, when the claim was made by mr. cohen to this committee under oath, that october 1st, everybody would be ready to sign up, it's clear from your investigation and your testimony that people within the agencies knew it was not ready. so any information you could provide us that tells us if they knew and made false claims as a committee or did know and make false claims as committee, it's important for the integrity of this committee to let us know. and if you could submit that information to this committee, i'd be grateful. your papers and other reviews. miss degette, reck niognized fo five minutes. >> i can understand why the chairman is concerned about this

based on your testimony today. so i want you to think very clearly about what your investigation found and what you have testified to this committee today when i ask you these questions. because i don't want the record to be confused. and i don't want a misimpression to be left. are you aware of a -- either miss tavener or mr. cohen, coming before this test committee and lying about whether they knew that the website was not ready? >> no, i cannot speak to that. i don't know. >> you don't know? do you know whether miss tavener or mr. cohen personally knew that the website was not ready? yes or no. >> no, i do not know. >> you don't know that. do you know whether miss tavener or mr. cohen specifically approved those changes? >> no, i do not know. >> you don't know that, either? >> no. >> do you know who within the

agency did approve those changes? >> ul matly, those changes were ratified and approved by the contracting officer. >> the contractor officer. you could give us information who that was. >> yes. >> thank you very -- i just think -- and i know the chairman agr agrees, we don't want to loosely be throwing around allegations of perjury or anything else when we -- and we don't want to put words in your mouth, either. so i think we're clear on that. there's one more thing i wanted to clarify about your testimony today. your first recommendation that, in your report on this topic, as we discussed, was take immediate steps to assess the causes of continued ffm cost growth and delayed system functionality and develop a mitigation plan designed to ensure timely and successful system performance. is that right? >> that's correct. >> and that's the one you're concerned about, cms, following

as they look at implementation of the 2015 program, is that correct? >> the effort that's under way by accentture is to move the development forward to be ready -- >> right. >> we -- >> huh? >> we think rms needs to make that assessment in order to ensure itself that it's on track. >> right. now, you were sitting here, i believe, when we heard the testimony of the previous witness. is that correct? >> yes, i was. >> and i specifically asked if he had reviewed the five recommendations gao had made. do you remember hearing that? >> yes. >> do you remember hearing him say that that cms agrees with all five of the recommendations? do you remember hearing that? >> i remember hearing that, yes. >> okay.

so i would just, you know, sometimes i like to have both the agency witness and the gao so that they can answer each other's issues. but i just want the record to be clear that he has said that they recognize this recommendation, they intend to comply with it, and i think, mr. chairman, we should follow-up and make sure that happens. thank you. i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you. i recognize dr. burkes for five minutes. >> thank you for being here. let me commend the general accountability office on great work. this has not been' easy. i appreciate how difficult it's been to be here today and i appreciate your forbearance. along the lines of what miss degette was just asking you, do you know whether or not the center for medicare, medicaid services is adopting your recommendations right now? >> what they told us is that they fully agreed with four of our recommendations. and they partially concurred with our fifth recommendation.

>> have you any evidence that you can point to that shows that, in fact, they are taking steps to comply with four of those recommendations? >> we've seen some indication. >> you have their assurances, but is there anything that you can point to in data, in fact? that they are taking those recommendations? >> what they told us is that -- what they told us is they're providing additional training in certain areas, that they plan to implement those recommendations. we're hopeful that they do. we have a normal, regular process for following up with agencies to make sure that if they tell us that they're going to implement recommendations that they, in fact, do so. that process will continue at gao. >> i look forward to the follow-up hearing we have about that implementation. now, you know a lot was written in august of 2012 about the

lack -- cms' or hhs' lack of production on rule making as a related to the essential health benefit. and, in fact, that rule making was delayed, the rule actually came out about a week after election day that year. i don't know if you recall that. in your work, was there any evidence that that delay was politically motivated? or am i just being overly sensitive and overly cynical by the rule coming out a few days after election day 2012? >> we found no indication of that, sir. >> so your emphasis is i'm being overly cynical? >> we can't -- we found nothing to -- >> let me just point out -- >> -- point us in that direction. >> why on this me it's come up several times today. mr. cohen was here, i think it was about 10 or 11 days before october 1st, and i asked him a very direct, very specific question. in fact, i tried to do a john dingell and said, yes, or no, the website will be ready on

october 1st. he gave me what i presume to have been a well rehearsed and studied answer because he repeated it verbatim twice, and it essentially said, on october 1st, on soupers wi erconsumers to go online, see premium net of subsidy, and make their purchase. as we know, that didn't actually turn out to be the case. so it is a valid question to ask. he must have known that ten days before the launch date because it sounds like from your report that it was pretty clear that things weren't going well. am i wrong about that? >> i simply can't speak to what he knew or didn't know at any particular point in time. but i can say that we found indications in the documents that we reviewed that the system was projected to be only 65% complete by that october 1st

deadline. >> if you had been sitting here and asked that question and reminded that you were under oet, wouoe oath, would you have answered it the same way mr. cohen did? >> i can't really respond. >> let me ask you this. you have written in the report as october to 21st 2013 deadline. cms identified significant performance issues involving the ffm, the facilitated federal marketplace contractor. but the agency took over only limited steps. can you provide for the committee what correspondence, what evidence, what documents you relied upon to come to that conclusion, to make that statement? >> absolutely. we can summarize what led us to that conclusion and would be happy to do that. >> as a part of making this statement, did you have access to internal e-mails within the center for consumer information and insurance oversight at cms? >> we reviewed lots of

documents, contract documents, e-mails, memos. so we had very good access to lots of information from cms. >> i appreciate that. i would simply ask that that access be made available to this committee, the documents, the e-mails, transcripts, that you have would make that available to our subcommittee. >> mr. chairman, i believe we already have that information in the subcommittee. >> let's find out. >> it's been produced already. >> again, i would ask that we be certain that you have produced the information the subcommittee staff is asking for. >> we'd be happy to work with the committee on that. >> let me just ask you one last thing. in your opinion, is the website -- open enrollment period this time is going to be much shorter than this time. in your opinion, are they going to be ready for the second open enrollment period? >> i'm not in a positionjudgmen.

that's why we had the recommendation we did, we think cms needs to make that assessment of cost and schedule to make sure they're on track. >> because there is the possibility they would not be able to meet that. >> we said in the report that that's the risk. is that there could be some impact on the 2015 enrollment period and that's why we had the recommendation that we did. >> thank you for being here. i yield back. >> thank you. i ask unanimous consent that the members' written opening statements be entered into the record. without objection. mr. woods, i want to thank you for your thorough and candid gao report. all this committee requests is honesty, thoroughness, and details and gao's participation as a report committee investigation is based on that ability to honestly and thoroughly provide the truth to a candid world. so we appreciate that. members will have several questions for follow-up. we do ask that you respond to them in a quick matter.

we also ask your commitment you'll share your work with our majority and minority staffs. in conclusion, i'd like to thank the members and witnesses who participated in today's hearing. they have ten business days to submit questions for the record. with that, i adjourn this hearing. at 7:00, former woe"washing post" reporter carl bernstein takes part in a discussion on watergate and resignation of richard nixon 40 years ago this summer. he'll be joined by historians douglas brinkley and luke nicter who co-authored the book "nixon tapes: 1971 to 197 2." live beginning at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3. and tonight, we'll be looking at senate races in hawaii, tennessee, and virginia. we'll begin at 8:00 with hawaii senator debating challenger and

current congresswoman hanabusa. we'll open up phone lines for your thoughts on the upcoming midterm election and expect candidate speeches following today's tennessee primary. that gets under way tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. the 9/11 commission released a new report last month on the growing threats from terrorist groups to cyber attacks. this new report comes ten years after the commission issued its recommendations for reforming the u.s. intelligence community in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. tom kean and lee hamilton shared their reflections on the commission, why it was such a success, and the report's recommendations adopted. >> good afternoon, everybody. it is my pleasure to interrupt your conversations for the last conversation of the day. i'm jason, the president of the bipartisan policy center. and it's a really great pleasure

to be here today. when we founded the bipartisan policy sener seven years ago with the leadership and support of senators dashell, dole. create the infrastructure and expertise that could support work and events like today. i really want to thank, again, our terrific partners, annenberg, and the carnegie corporation, both for the substantive and intellectual engagement and, of course, the financial support to make the day and the report possible. when i'm out describing the partisanship and efforts to restore, i get two responses. some combination of, sounds like stuff sledding, and at least you have job security. it's a fair understanding. we have deeply dysfunctional government and target-rich

environment for very big problems. one of the great aspents of this work for you, i get an opportunity to work with a variety of different fascinating people, tremendous issues, and terrific leaders. but i can say in my seven years, there has really been no more compelling effort than the opportunity over the last year to work be the 9/11 commission. i really obviously want to thank lee and tom. unique aspect of working with lee and tom is that everyone wants to talk to them. thus the report that we released today, as i think we mentioned, was informed by literally dozens of interviews from experts inside and outside government. most of those interviews were not for attribution. there's one reflection i'll share with yougratulationcongra.

as you gather here in washington, i know you're also paying tribute to the leadership of two great americans. tom kean and lee hamilton. ten years ago, the 9/11 commission came together on a bipartisan basis to help the american people understand one of the darkest days in our history. and to provide recommendations about how to keep our country safer. the power of your report. your commitment to transparency, and dedication to preventing future attacks brought our country together. from the leadership of director of national intelligence, to the analysis of the national counterterrorism center, to the coordination among our federal, state, and local agencies. i rely on your recommendations every day. none of that would have been possible without the leadership provided by tom and lee. you come from different parts of our great country. tom's a proud citizen of the garden state. and lee is a quintessential hoosier who first made his name on the basketball court. both of you embody what americans want in their public servants. integrity, humility,

intelligence, and commitment to put the interest of our country before a partisan or personal agenda. in the statehouse in trenton, to the halls of congress, you've made your mark, and i speak for so many americans when i say our country could use a lot more public servants like tom kean and lee hamilton. in addition to everything else, you're also tireless which is why even today you're still providing recommendations to my administration and congress about how to protect our country. so, thank you, to the 9/11 commission and two men who provided such extraordinary leadership, you made our country safer and have not only my thanks, but the thanks of a fwr grateful nation. >> so as you can imagine, it is a real honor to be sharing the stage with two leaders who have demonstrated what bipartisanship can provide. now, there's no question that our nation is deeply divided

today, but it would be a gross misrepresentation to suggest the 9/1 1 commission was operating during a gentle time of bipartisan constructive agreement and members of congress holding hands in the national interest. but still, amidst those political times and incredibly high stakes, tom and lee united five democrats and five republicans in a consensus report that obviously resulted in dramatic policy change and also helped heal our nation from the tragedy of 9/11. so having spent the morning focused on policy substitutions, we want to close today with a reflection on the commission process. a little bit of behind the music review. what we can learn about functional partisanship and really understand the processes that have guided us successfully through most of our nation's 230-year history. so i'm going to join -- look at that. technology.

going to join these two leaders and, you know, pose a couple of questions. so first off, i think it's been mentioned in a few different ways today that the fundamental essence of politics is some amount of trust. now, you two have worked so effectively together a lot of people thought you knew each other before this process and you had actually been intimate and trusted friends and, of course, my understanding is that is not the case. so i thought it would be useful to share and how did you meet each other, and frankly, what were your first impressions, if you would be so bold? lee, do you want to -- >> well, jason, you're correct. i had known as tom kean as governor. not a lot about new jersey. he was always recognized and thought of as one of the more successful governors in recent history. so i knew him by reputation.

i may have shaken his hand once or twice before we met. to head up the 9/11 commission. it's worth remembering that both of us were substitutes. original nominees were henry kissinger and george mitchell. and both of them had to step aside because of conflict of interest. so tom and i were second stringers. tom and i met and told the staff last night that almost the first thing he said to me substantively was, lee, we're going to make every decision jointly. well, having come from the congress where the chairman has all the power and the ranking

member has none of the power, and where partisanship is very strong and staffs are chosen on a partisan basis, i was somewhat flabbergasted. it was an extraordinary gesture on tom's part. just extraordinary. and i look back on it, as one of the most important decisions in government that i have encountered. because when you think about all the things that have flowed from the fact that we had a unanimous report and were able to work together and all the legislation passed and all the changes in the institutional structure of government of all the budget changes and all of that flowed. from tom's initial offer. and i think it's quite extraordinary. so i became acquainted with a man who had vision of where he wanted to go.

and how to get there. he taught me patience, which has never been one of my great qualities. he taught me how to listen and the most important skill in politics and government, which is the ability to build a consensus behind a solution. it's a very -- excuse me for wandering around a little here jason, but it's a very easy thing to go into a room where you have differences of opinion and blow it apart. i know it's easy, because i've done it on any number of occasions. what's really hard, really hard is to go into that room and get people to work together. it usually takes a lot more than one meeting. tom has that skill to an extraordinary disagree. and so he deserves the credit

for putting the commission on a consensus building posture. >> tom, some early memories of the process? >> yeah, i remember that meeting, myself. the thing about lee is, his reputation launches before him. i knew a lot about lee hamilton, everything i knew about him was good. i talked to republican friends of mine in the congress. i said, he's a wonderful guy to work with. i talked to people who are usually very partisan, he knows how to work between the parties. he's made accomplishments in that realm. i'm not sure i would have said that to many other people. your reputation was so good in the area of everybody trusting you. and very few people trust anybody in this town. but they trusted lee hamilton. when i walked in and said, we're going to work together. i had an understanding this was somebody i was going to have a

great deal of pleasure working with, not only that, but somebody who filled in so many gaps that i had in leading the commission. i was the outsider, i came from new jersey. i had never worked in washington. and this was a washington institution dealing with washington problems of the government and the congress and all of that, so lee's long experience in both administrative and in the congress was something that i totally lacked. without lee, i wouldn't have known what the hell i was doing. i could go to him with total trust and get his opinion and know it was based on intelligence, long experience, and absolute integrity. and so that wasn't hard. to answer your question, really. lee and i worked on it hard.

we worked on it very hard to be bipartisan. first time "meet the press" called me and asked me to appear. i said, i'll appear if you have lee hamilton with me. tim russert's people basically said, we don't let guests pick guests. i said, then get somebody else. about two hours later, they called back, said, we're delighted to have you and lee. and then the way the other commissioners, with their own dedication of bipartisanship started going by like noah's k ark, two by two. a democrat would ask a republican. so we got known throughout the town as people who were working together in a bipartisan manner. we worked everything from the seating arrangeles on the hearings and republicans and

democrats sitting next to each other. just everything we could do to emphasize partisanship from the beginning. the other thing i would say, by the way, is very important. that lee and i worked together on. you can't be bipartisan unless you get to know each other. and recognize each other as people. people who are there to do a job and care very much about what they do, it was the same motivations you are. so the idea we would meet for dinner, even with no agenda sometimes to get to know each other. the idea that jamie was kind enough to invite the commissioners to herrous, john layman did the same thing in new york. we got to know each other as people. gradually those rs and ds started to disappear. the answer is, you know, lee hamilton was enormously important in that process because he came from a back ground of dealing with people in both parties that was rare in this town. >> i think that's really a

tremendous reflection that embodies our experience in almost every successful effort we've ever undertaken. also very important that you had that kind of unity at outset. as a number of people mentioned, it wasn't all rosy when this process started. in fact, tom, i read you said at one time the commission was set up to fail. so if you would think back 12 years and talk a little bit about how did the rest of the world embrace your commitment to collaboration, and do you actually feel like you had to overcome frameworks that were actually designed to not be successful? >> i made that comment, and i think it was true, because the congress voted for us to be set up, an awful lot of members of congress didn't want us at all. the families know that better than anybody else. they had to fight for the setting up of the commission. the president didn't want us. he thought he could do an investigation in the administrative branch.

they didn't give us enough money. less money than any other commission had gotten. they didn't give us enough time, and it was in the year of the presidential election. so it was the most partisan time in washington. i looked at all of those factors and figured, my god, we've been set up to fail. and so it was -- we had to fight. we had to fight to get more money, fight to get more time, fight to get access to documents we needed. we had to fight to get people to testify to make our cases. nothing was easy. without the kind of bipartisan group we had with us, without the work of all these commissioners, we would never have been successful, because i think a lot of people thought we had been set up to fail and they wouldn't have been sad if we had. >> i would simply add that there's no such thing as instant credibility. we didn't have credibility when we started as a commission.

commissions are a dime a dozen in this town. and you have to overcome a certain skepticism about commissions if you're part of one. you have to work and earn credibility. and it took us months, maybe a year or so before we had credibility. but people began to understand that we were serious, that we were not a highly partisan body. that we had an enormously important mandate given us by the families of the victims. and an important mandate from the congress, itself. the individual commissioners, their reputations, their credibility as professionals was enormously helpful to establishing the credibility of

the commission. as we performed our job and people began to understand the importance of what we were doing, our approach to it, our credibility began to build, you could just feel it, i sensed it as we did our work through a period of maybe better than a year. we were building credibility as we went along, so that when we got to the end and issued a report, we had standing among the american people, and among the media, this is a tough town, the media people are tough on politicians. i can give you a lecture on that, but i won't. but we had earned their respect, i believe, in the process. and they began to see this commission as unusual. >> one more question reflecting back to the process.

so at the bpc, we often find in our negotiations that there comes down to a small number of issues, often not the most important issues, that become essentially the crucible of the debate. that the group has to work its way through that issue. once it breaks through that issue, just about everything else feels possible. do you remember issues like that? i know these were private discussions, so obviously share what you feel comfortable with, but were there moments you felt things hung in the balance and issues that drove the larger discussion? >> yes. and lee hamilton had a mantra. we'd get into heated discussions about particularly the language of the report and the recommendations, and then there would be a hesitation. he'd at least say, let's go back and look at the facts. and you got out of -- and then

gradually we started removing adjectives from the report and just stating the facts. and if you look at that report, there were not a lot of adjectives in it. it was just a report with plain writing and clear writing base got rid of the adjectives and the adjectives are what people got excited about. you were the one, every time, let's look at the facts, that was an enormous contribution. once we looked at facts and got rid of the adjectives, we found agreement. >> that's a key point. i'm sitting here looking at the washington monument and outside the window, and it brings back a memory of mine. i'd drive home 2:00, 3:00 in the morning sometimes across the 14th street bridge into northern virginia. and on several occasions i remember thinking to myself, oh, we're never going to get an agreement on that issue. we'd been talking about it for several hours and hadn't reached it.

but we'd come back -- now, here's where tom's patience paid off. we'd come back and start all over again. and what came to me very strongly was that consensus can be reached on most issues. not all issues. most issues. if you approach it properly. you've got to have time, you've got to have patience, you've got to try to understand the other guy's point of view. you've got to ask yourself, what are the commonalities in our views, and what are the dissimilarities in our views? and how can we reconcile those views? and that was the approach we tried to take. jason, you asked specific issues, i'm not sure i can answer that. i don't have a specific issue in

mind that really hung us up. tom, do you think of one? >> i think how handle the intelligence community was one of long discussion. we looked at every point of view. we had people come in and testify even from great britain on how they did it, and that took a long time to get consensus, i think, on the dni and how to do that. >> you're probably right. we had an extraordinary access to good judgment from all kinds of people. former officials. i don't know how many we interviewed. we interviewed scores and scores of them and people wanted us to succeed. that became an important factor too. the country -- this event of 9/11 was the most tragic day in

our history, probably. and it had a huge impact on the american people. so early on, we sensed that they were rooting for us. and that made a big difference. they wanted us to come up with something that would be useful for the country. when you have that kind of support behind you, you feel it, you feel it, and i think commissioners understood that the country was depending on us. they really wan ewanted us to sd here, and they fully supported us. it was not just a matter of the families. the families led the way. but they captured the attention of the american public. the politicians, incidentally, that led the city, were not initially enthusiastic about us. >> no, they weren't. >> and it was only after the people became enthusiastic about

us that the politicians began to change. >> not a new dynamic in our democracy. >> one more thing. the staff. i mean, we had a very short time to hire a lot of good people. but a lot of good people wanted to work for us, because of the tragedy. and we -- lee and i had one common thing. we didn't care whether somebody was republican or democrat. we only asked that question. but we did not want somebody who had been a heavy partisan for other republicans or democrats. and so we went through resumes pretty carefully, and say no partisan, we didn't care. but if you've been very active, very active in campaigns and very active one party or another, then we didn't want you because we didn't want that kind of partisanship seeping into our deliberations. >> i don't think we ever asked anybody their political affiliation. >> we didn't. we didn't. >> we had excellent supervision

in that staff. chris sheer is here. he was the deputy director. phil was the deputy director. he's not here. both were outstanding in the work they did for us. dan marcus, i think i saw earlier, he was the legal counsel. and the top straight of the staff were really outstanding people who shared, i think, our vision of the importance of what we were doing. and tom and i relied enormously on them throughout the process, and i think the rest of the staff did, too. incidentally, one of the things that the commissioners called upon us to do, which we refused to do. i won't name any names of the commissioners here, but i could, who came to us and said, i want you to assign a staff person to help me on this issue. tom and i refused that order.

we didn't want to give up any staff people to others, i guess, we were a little selfish at that point, but the staff worked for the commission, they worked for tom and me. they were totally nonpartisan, and they had a high degree of technical expertise. we had about -- 70 members of the staff. if you look at the way they were allocated, you have a lot of expertise in different areas of government. we looked at a lot of complicated stuff, technical stuff. and we had to have highly qualified staff to help guide us through it. >> tom, you referred to the report, and its clean pros. one of the most unique things about this commission is that a government report as you all know was a bestseller. if i can quote john updike who

knows a little by about writing, when re viewing the report in "the new yorker," he says, "the king james bible was our language's lone masterpiece written by committee. at least until this year's 9/11 commission report." and so that was a pretty significant and consequential choice, and in they diaddition removing the fiery adjectives, how did you decide to write a report that was really designed for the american public? was that a hard decision? >> you know, we had a -- right away a decision to make when we picked a staff in that regard. and a lot of people recommended to us, a bunch of generals, a bunch of other people. and we picked to lead the staff a historian, and we picked a couple. and i got a call, i don't know if i said this before. i got a call from the white house. they said, we don't want him.

and i said, why not? and they said, because he's a historian. i said, it's history, isn't it? no, no, you don't understand. we're going to tell you everything. we're just not going to tell you where we got it. a historian's footnote. i said, i think lee and i are probably going to pick historian. we already picked one historian with three historians on the staff as well as wonderful writers like john farmer and people like that. we had on the staff people who could write and who knew how to write history, because that's what this was. but in addition to that, the amazing thing to me, as commissioners remember at those last meetings, all the commissioners went over every sentence of that report. and made changes. >> more than once. >> yes, absolutely. and so the idea of ten people going over every word of a report and making changes, and still having something come

that's readable, was to me absolutely remarkable. >> i think the first chapter of the report is a classic. an absolute classic. it just tells you the story of what happened on 9/11. and it was put together by very good writers. simple, direct, candid. and i think it's going to be a long, long time before you see another government report on the bestseller's list. that's among our more notable achievements, i believe. >> lee, i think it was one of the commissioners, and i don't remember which one. the original report we were starting with the history of al qaeda, and one of the commissioners, i don't remember who it was, you know, we shouldn't do that. we should start with the history of the event and how it

happened. it was absolutely the right decision, a suggestion made by the commissioner. i will give them credit if i remember which one it was. but it was absolutely the right solution. >> and that factual recitation of what happened on that day -- is now the starting point for anybody who looks into 9/11. we all know 9/11 will be looked at for centuries to come in this count country. we're quite a ways away from the writing of that report. but it's held up pretty well. in deed, i think factually we got the story right, basically. and that was one of our mandate. we had a double mandate. number one, tell the story. number two, set out the recommendations to make us safer. and we've had a lot of people challenge.

i still get a call probably once every couple weeks from people who disagree strongly with the report. and if i speak on a college campus, i can absolutely assure you that there will be people in the audience who have conspiracy nearry theories about what happened on that day. some believing, for example, that the united states air force maneuvered the whole thing and flew the planes into the tower, and all kinds of stories. they even had a convention on this out in los angeles, attacking the 9/11 commission report, and it drew 3,000 people, i'm told, who thought we were nuts. and so you run into that element. there's a large segment of the american people, larger than you might think, who believe that anything that comes out of government is wrong. and we encountered some of that as we issued the report.

>> one other dynamic -- there were a lot of unique, i think, dynamic s you all were affected by. one is clearly the role of the families. it was terrific to have leaders of the families here with us tod today. talk a little bit about how you engage the families and what opportunities and challenges there were. because of the depth of emotion from this tragedy. >> that was one of the most humbling and one of the most, to me, life-changing experiences working with the families. i was, i think, maybe the only commissioner who lived right in the middle of the area where most people lost their lives, and so i knew the number of people who perished that day, i knew their families, i went to funerals for months, six months maybe, as people recognized loss

at different times. i was on the board of a company that lost 80 or 90 people in the tower, so i think i was, for that reason, i think i saw more of the families than almost anybody else. maybe tim roamer who worked very, very closely with the families in a very effective way. their passion, their righteous anger, even their irrationality out of deep grief and other problems was a driving force in our work. people have said there wouldn't have been a commission if it hadn't been for the families. as we moved along, every time we hit a huge boulder, not enough money. the families were there to push for more money. not enough time, the families were there to push for more money. the president refused to testify. condi didn't want to testify. the families pushed and made

that happen. they were an integral part of our work and very, very important. >> there wouldn't be a 9/11 commission report without them. it's as simple as that. they had the credibility and the standing, which we did not have to put this forward. keep in mind that neither the executive nor the legislative bank were very anxious to do this early on. congress looked at it as an intrusion. we were doing something they were qualified to do. the executive branch had deep reservations about it. what changed the politicians was not tom and me. but the families. and the other lesson of these families, for me, was -- i often cited when i talk to people about citizen participation. in an amazingly short period of

time, they learned to be very sophisticated people in dealing with government. this place is a complicated city. very complex place. the levers of power here, people spend a lifetime trying to understand it. they picked up the rudiments of politics very quickly to push forward their ideas. and it's about as good an example of citizen participation as i know. what they did. i don't think any of them would claim to be experts on the american government prior to 9/11. all of them can claim to be experts now. they got results, and there are a lot of lessons in their activity. i hope incidentally and maybe

it's already happened, i hope that the academics delve into what you all did. because i think it's a marvelous example of civic participation. and the details of it would be very instructive from the future. >> as you can tell, these are tough guys to moderate. and i could ask a lot more questions, but i want to see if we can open this up. i'm going to ask one more question. and we're going to take as many audience questions as we have time for. so, my last question really builds on a lot of this conversation. you have identified a number of the themes that are essential to functional government. trust, the ability to have private conversations. the commitment to facts. the outside pressure from an engaged citizenship. one of the reasons we were so enthusiastic about helping to bring the commission back together is you're just an existence proof of how it can work.

my question is, what do you see as a legacy of the commission beyond its recommendations? >> well, you know, tom brokaw said to me that you wrote a great report, an important recommendations. but i think the reason the american people embraced you was it was the first important bipartisan thing that had been done to this town in a long, long time, and it was unanimous. that's got to be an important part of our legacy. the idea that republicans and democrats can come together. i mean, the idea when i first learned about lee and the idea that he'd. working with republicans and democrats. my history was -- i was speaker of a legislature in new jersey that had no majority. and i had to maneuver that into making some pretty good

accomplishments. i was governor of a state as a republican that didn't have a democratic legislature. and had to learn to work with them. out of all that, i got, as lee did, a deep respect for a number of people in the other party and the idea that their views were legitimate, that they were part of a constituency, and it was better to work with them than against them. i don't know if we lost that in this town. the idea that people who come to washington come there generally for the right reason. i mean, these are people who really want to serve the american people. and just as much as you do. and there's no reason, therefore, that you can't value, value that, and work with people and come to bipartisan resolutions and i think it's -- i hope that's a lesson that we get from the commission. >> i think one of the greatest ideas in the history of mankind, to be very modest about it, is representative democracy.

but no one ever said that representative democracy was easy. it is very hard work. and i think what the commission achieved was an example of representative democracy working. not perfectly. we had a few bumps and bruises along the way. several of our recommendations were ignored. but a lot of good things happened because of it. so i think the ability to develop a consensus behind the solution, which is what government is all about, government is really about a search for a remedy. that's not my phrase, some scholar said that. but that's exactly right. there's an awful lot of politics. there's a lot of noise. there's a lot of diversion out

here, which we focus on a great deal. but underneath it all, what you're really trying to do in the political system is to find a remedy to problems that are enormously difficult to solve. when i went to high school, though, many, many decades ago, we had 130 million people in this country. today, whatever it is, 315 million or 20 million. so in my working lifetime and tom's, we far more than doubled in size as a country. and, of course, we've also become much, much more diverse. so the consensus building process has become much harder. and it takes terrific energy and skill to make it work.

this is an example where it did work. representative democracy can work. not easily, but it can work. >> i'd like to open it up to some questions, and we have mike runner. i think we're going to start -- >> matt. sorry. matt. fair enough. >> yes, my name is matthew solito. my son, matthew c.solito, was on the 105th floor in tower one when it was hi, and we lost my son, matthew, that day. i was asked by the commission back in the beginning for my wife and i to be part of the families that the commission could use to bounce off information before they went to the public. i remember back then that there were 28 pages that were classified. the commission did not want these pages to be classified.

but the executive branch of our government kept them classified. going forward, former senator bob graham, representative lynch, and representative jones tried to get them declassified, and they even brought hr-428 and tried to get a ruling to get them declassified. to this day, they are still declassified. >> still classified. >> they're still classified. i'm sorry. they are still classified. i'd like to know from the gentlemen up on the dais, what are ayour feelings to this day,

and do you still think they should be declassified? >> well, i -- yes, they should be. i'm embarrassed that they're not declassified. we emphasized throughout, and when i -- i assumed incorrectly that our records would be public, all of them, everything. and then, when i learned that a number of the documents were classified or even redacted, i was surprised and disappointed. i want those documents declassified. i'm embarrassed to be asoeszuated with a work product that is secret. >> i'm just going to say very briefly, matt, in this democracy, very little ought to be classified. only the most seriously important national security issues.

there are very few of them. my experience, i was -- i think almost every other commissioner had an access to classified information before under a security clearance. i never had. i was the outsider. so i was very excited when i got my first shiny right to look at secrets. and i was amazed in reading the stuff that it was stuff i knew already. i remember the first time i read the whole report, my classification, i turned to the f.b.i. guy who was watching me and said i knew all of this already. and he said yes, but you didn't know it was true. that is not a reason for classification. but i'd say, lee, i don't think i'm exaggerating. i'd say 60-70% anyway, of the stuff we saw that was classified, in my opinion, should not have been. and should have been available to the american people. this is an example of the kind of thing that should be, as i

remember that particular section, it has been updated because i think we did research on that particular episode in san diego with saudi arabia. and i believer if you read the 9/11 reports, you'll find anything you want to find about that particular section. but it's no reason to classify it anymore. i just don't believe keeping things secret. we're not stronger nati-- we're stronger nation if we keep less secret from our people. >> can you introduce yourself when you ask your question. >> hello. i'm an l&m student. recently, i visited the 9/11 museum here. i saw saudi passports right next to the 9/11 attacks. my question is do you think you

have the right to show those pass porports of those people? by showing the passport, you're accusing 3 million saudis of being terrorists. i think that's just not right. i don't know what you think about that. i'm a saudi. i almost lost my father in al-qaida attacks. my father works for the general security. the building he was working in got bombed by al-qaida. so just my question is i don't think that easter r's materiali about the country. i think all that will generate is maybe anger and hatred towards a country or the majority of those people are innocent and not guilty terrorists. thank you. >> so i think the question is

about the bhu scemuseum exhibit whether that's an effective way to talk about the issues or kind of build the conversation going forward. >> i think we've got to make it very, very clear that these are a violent and unusual segment of a great religion. and that actually, if we're going to continue to fight terrorism, as we are, that the muslim community are our best allies. because they resent these people as much or more than we do. their families have been held in many cases. and if we realize that, and recognize that working with the muslim community is the best way to root out the terrorism, and, at the same time, having tremendous respected f

tremendous respected for that community while we do. we're all going to be better off. >> the only thing i can say is we are guests at the museum, buff i can promise to convey that to the folk who is have that kind of authority so they're at least aware of your views, views, which i think we take very seriously. we have a question far back in that corner and then towards the middle. >> thank you. leandra bernstein. with the impact of 9/11, it set into effect a whole series of foreign wars, almost oolg r aann jihad. much of the consequential policy of the united states with these foreign adventures has not been disz cussed. a number of the panelists said that the recommendations of the commission put into effect, prevented a lot of terrorists' attacks. but, without the transparency

how are we to believe that? so how were these attacks to have been prevented? but, at the same time, it was a much more dangerous world. so how can we claim a success in these policies if we've created a more dangerous environment. and i do believe it's very important to be critical of american policy in general and not just focus crisis to crisis but of the american trend that has taken off in the past five years. >> well, i don't think it's correct to say that we created a more dangerous world.

what has created a more dangerous world for us has been the activities of others. not our activities. now, i guess you could argue that some of our policies have angered people and caused them to want to attack us. but i really do not accept the idea that we created the more dangerous world: look, there are a lot of things happening in the world today that we don't control. and that come about not because of the united states, but because of what's happening local locally and so many of the problems in the world today arise from the arab world.

the arab world is going through enormous turmoil. we're trying to do it as best we can. it's a formal challenge for our policy leaders. your reaction, however, is quite understandable. we have restructured our whole government. we've learned a lot, i think. a lot of people have thought about this and the inside of the commission was terrorism was at least a generational challenge. it will continue, so we have to keep the sense of urgency up and

the place of complacency avoided. >> i'm sorry, i think we only have time for two more questions. >> just a second, i may get to your point here. we obviously didn't get anything into foreign policy in the commission report. but there is a section of the report that deals with our relations with other countries. and what we asked for in that report was a policy that took more into account promoting education, for instance, in that part of the world. promoting the rights of women in that part of the world. >> an agenda of opportunity. >> that's right. and using that kind of efforts in foreign policy. if you look at, you know, we're deeply unpopular and have been for a while in the arab world. rightly or wrongly. but, you know, the most popular muslim country in the world is indonesia. and indonesia, we were just as unpopular.

until the tsunami happened. and when the tsunami happened, as you remember, ex-president bush, ex-president clinton went there with a tremendous amount of aid. and american soldiers were there with packages of food and health and sanitation and all of that. after that, the popularity of the united states went from, my memory, 17% up to almost 70%. and it's still the highest. you know, that's a lot cheaper than war. and i think the point of that section of the report, there's been a lot if we haven't read that much of it, is that we should have a foreign policy that, also, doesn't just depend on troops in the ground but depends on heart-to-hearted work and helping with education and women and all of that.