lar pleasure to be here. i think one of my fellow council members ellen lipson is indeed there. hi, ellen. why don't we get right to it? it's a real pleasure to be with an old friend, h.r. mcmaster. lieutenant general h.r. mcmaster. we go back a long way. general mcmaster's career probably known to most of you. i'll just touch on a few of the highlights. a hero of the first gulf war at a battle called 73 easting which made his mark. also made his mark with a dissertation turned into book called "dereliction of duty," which is one of the more important books that has come out about civil-military relations in vietnam. went on to other commands including most notably serving in the iraq war in command of an armored cavalry regiment at the

battle of tal afar. continuing on to serve in afghanistan afghanistan. and now h.r., i'm going to butcher your title. so i'll let you give it to me directly. >> it's deputy commander general for training and doctrine command for futures. and then the clunky long title is the army capabilities integration center. >> i'm glad i didn't try to memorize that. >> arcic. >> but what h.r. is really that quite extraordinary combination of thinker and great military leader. there aren't that many in our history. there are a few people like general jack galvin but it's very few. so we're really privileged i think to have somebody with us who has an extraordinarily distinguished record of command including command in combat. with an equally distinguished record as a thinker. he was also i should have

mentioned up front a senior fellow at the iiss and remains affiliated with iiss as well. it's wonderful to be here with him particularly since as i said we're old friends. the way we thought we'd do this is begin it as a conversation. i have a couple questions i'd like to ask general mcmaster draw him out on a few subjects. and then i'll moderate a discussion from the floor. so h.r. the army has just produced something called the army operating concept which i guess you had stewardship of. what is an operating concept, and why does the army need it? >> okay. well, it's a great question eliot. what a privilege it is to be here with you and at the international institute for strategic studies an organization which i think makes tremendous contributions to international security and an institution that really benefited me tremendously in my two years in london which turned out to be about four months

because i was mainly in iraq but had access to the scholars at the international center for strategic studies, toby dodge, others who really helped us tremendously in understanding how the conflict in iraq had evolved and to help refashion the strategy there in early 2007. so what a privilege it is to be here at the international institute for strategic studies and with you, eliot. though the army operating concept is important because it describes how army forces will have to operate in the future and i think one of the things we can do even in times of diminished resources and budget constraints, is we can think clearly about future war and we need to maybe in particular based on some of the budget constraints and so forth. so in this army operating concept we really look at the problem of future armed conflict through the lens of both continuity and change. continuity in the nature of war changes in the character of armed conflict. keeping in mind in particular there are certain things about armed conflict that really don't change a lot, and that's really

war's fundamental political nature, that war is waged to achieve sustainable political outcomes. we talk about the army's role in providing foundational capabilities to the joint force. but how in particular the army has to be prepared to defeat enemy organizations but then also to consolidate gains, to get the sustainable, usually political outcomes. we recognize in the army operating concept the human dimension of war and the fact that people fight in large measure for the same reasons people thought 2500 years ago where they identified fear, honor, and interest as what motivates people in armed concept. to understand that we say in the army operating concept soldiers and leaders have to be able to develop situational understanding in close contact with enemies but also civilian populations. what is really driving conflict. so we're not just treating the symptoms of conflicts, we're actually dealing with the

causes. the third thing we emphasize in the operating concept is that war is uncertain, that the future course of events in armed conflict has more to do than with what you decide to do. it depends on initiatives and reactions of your enemies that are often impossible to predict at the outset of a conflict. in the army operating concept we don't say we're going to dominate in the future. what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to be able to adapt continuously to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative while we're capable and oftentimes elusive and determined enemies. and then finally we recognize that war is a contest of wills. it's a contest of wills in terms of our own soldiers and teams, what john keegan said in the face of battle really that battle, combat is the struggle of men and women trying to reconcile their instinct for self-preservation with the achievement of some aim over which other human beings are trying to kill them. so how do you develop in your soldiers really the ability to

operate in these uncertain and complex environments, these environments of persistent danger. how do you develop cohesive teams and soldiers that can operate in these environments. the human dimension of war. these continuities are very important. but then we also looked at changes in the character of armed conflict through four lenses as well. what are threats, enemies, and adversaries, how are they evolving. we talk more about that. what missions does the army do as part of the joint force, as part of what we now call another clunky term, interorganizational teams. bringing civilian capabilities, for example, and multinational teams. anticipating those missions and how they're changing based on geopolitics but also technology which is a third thing. what technologies can we integrate into our army to make us more effective while keeping in mind enemy countermeasures to our technological capabilities and enemy technologies. and then finally history and lessons learned, right? what are we learning from conflicts today and how does

that apply? this is a description in the army operating concept of how army forces have to operate in the future based on continuity and change and then based on that description of how the army forces have to operate we then determine what sort of capabilities we need in our army. then this is a starting point for learning for thinking about future war learning about future armed conflict and applying what we're learning to future force capability development. not just things and material but how we change our doctrine how we evolve our organizations how we change leader development and education, how we modify our training. to make sure that we -- what we say in the army operating concept is we want to achieve overmatch of our enemies, right? if you don't have an overmatch over an enemy in combat, that means it's a fair fight right? and a fair fight in war's an ugly proposition. so what we want to do is achieve overmatch as part of joint forces to accomplish future

missions. >> that's great. so let me press you a little bit on that. we've been hearing a lot in recent months and years about hybrid warfare and in particular the kinds of things the russians have been up to in the eastern ukraine. does that phrase, hybrid warfare, mean anything? and is it actually new? >> right. well i think as historians historians typically say it's not really new. but i think it's reappeared and it's reappeared with maybe a higher degree of clarity and we can understand it better seeing what russia has done in ukraine and crimea before that and georgia and so forth. and i think to describe what hybrid means it really means that russia is competing on multiple battlegrounds, first of all. multiple contested spaces which war is contested not just in the physical domain but it's contested on the battleground of information and perception. it's contested on the battle

battleground of oftentimes political subversion and oftentimes these conflicts bleed over into sort of organized crime networks and other transnational sort of dimensions of the conflict. i think it's important to recognize that to win an armed conflict you have to be able to compete on multiple battlegrounds in contested spaces. in the army operating concept i think we recognize this and what we say is that army forces are critical to projecting not just military power but national power to deal with these kinds of threats. and you might say, okay, what do you mean the army is saying project national power. well, really to be able to operate effectively in contested environments and environments that are unsafe you'd better take some soldiers with you to be able to apply political influence, develop security forces and develop institutional capacity, to provide support to government, to rule of law, to law enforcement activities. intelligence activities and so forth. i think this hybrid warfare term

is useful because we can see russia using combinations of unconventional forces and conventional forces. we see that we have to be prepared for a broad range i think of threats on these multiple battlegrounds. i think also what russia's actions, to really i think in many ways changed the geopolitical landscape on the eurasian land mass and i think to place under duress the existing political order in europe and try to challenge it and collapse it is what we see is the value of military forces in deterring this kind of activity. and in particular land forces, right? so i think because i'm in the army and part of my job is to describe the army's contribution to the joint force, i think what you see with russia has been able to do is wage limited war for limited objectives.

to essentially in ukraine, to effect a land grab very quickly at very low cost because the ukrainians were unable to really contest it. and then to consolidate that gain and portray the reactions of the international community as escalatory. so how do you cope with that kind of a capability? i think one of the ways you can do that is through forward deterrence. and you have to do that with land forces. stand-up capabilities are important to national defenses we know that. but really it's land forces that ratchet up the cost at frontiers, for example, and to make it more palatable for russia to take that kind of action with unconventional forces under the cover of conventional forces. what we see with hybrid warfare is not just the deterrent value of land forces but i think what you also see is the role of

combined arms capabilities. a lot of people sometimes question the army, hey, why are you developing new combat vehicles, right? are you just trying to go back to the cold war? well, actually, paradoxically those who say that are actually advocating for world war i capabilities really. if you want to go back to the era before combat vehicles. the western front is a good place to start in world war i. it's the combined arms capability. mobile protected firepower is important as a tool. along with special forces capabilities and conventional forces applied in combination. i think what russia has done is showed us what combined arms is again. you could actually say if you want to overstate it that russia is changing sort of the geostrategic landscape there with tanks right now. so there is a value in that kind of combined arms capability. and then i think what we have said in the army operating concept is our differential advantage in the army and in the american joint force doesn't

come with any one single capability, right? it comes with how we combine capabilities. our differential badge over the enemies enemies, the advanced technology is the element of our differtial advantage that is most easily transferrable our adversaries. as we know, china's been engaged in the largest theft of intellectual property in history. what is our advantage? our advantage combinations of capabilities employed to seize retain, and exploit the initiative. combinations of technology with skilled soldiers and teams. so i think there's a lot you can draw from the recent experience in ukraine, and i think it highlights in large meshes the importance of land forces as part of the joint team and the importance of combined arms and joint capabilities. what we call in the army operating concept joint combined arms combinations. >> let me ask you a couple personal questions which i think

will help enrich the discussion. you've really had quite extraordinarily a range of combat experiences from being a troop commander to being on a very senior staff in afghanistan. it's really -- it is extraordinary. could you tell me let's say the top three lessons you've taken from your personal experience fighting this country's war in iraq and afghanistan. >> it's a great question. i think what those experiences have demonstrated to me again is really a point that i made earlier, is that there are really important continuities in the nature of war and whenever we try to do what carl van claus warned against, don't try to turn war into something that's alien to its nature, that's when we have problems. we have problems when we don't recognize the political, the human dimension of war, war is uncertainty and war is a contest

of wills. so i think an overall lesson and it's a great question because i think the lessons that we learn from the wars in afghanistan and iraq will be as important as maybe the outcomes of those wars. i think we're at real risk of learning the wrong lessons. so i think the number one lesson is that we neglect the continuities and the nature of war in our peril. so for example if you think about the very successful campaign in afghanistan in 2001 and our ability to empower in mujahadin era militias with our precision strike capabilities, our intelligence capabilities-w our intelligence capabilities, what we're able to do is achieve a military victory very quickly. but the military operations we conducted, the way we conducted military operations were not conducive maybe to consolidating those gains and getting to that sustainable political outcome. those mujahadin militias we empowered were able to essentially effect state capture over nascent state institutions

and functions that had to be rebuilt from the ground up because of the civil war from '92 to '96 because of the soviet occupation, because of the dismantlement of those institutions under the taliban. and so those militias then morphed into organized crime networks. you might call them criminalized patronage networks who pursued political agendas but also criminal agendas to consolidate power in a post-u.s. afghanistan. the activities they engaged in essentially were hollowing out the institutions we were trying to build. institutions critical to afghanistan being able to cope with the regenerative capacity of the taliban as they began to regenerate across the border in pakistan. so i think a lesson from afghanistan is that war is an extension of politics. you have to conduct military operations in a way that allows you to accomplish military objectives and consolidate the gains. in iraq a well-known story is not doing enough to allay the concerns of the minority

population, especially the sunni arab populations and doing things that in retrospect exacerbated the fears of those communities and set conditions really for the evolution of that conflict from a decentralized localized hybrid insurgency into a large-scale communal conflict and a humanitarian disaster and so forth. i think the number one lesson is that neglect the continuities of the nature of war at your peril. and whenever a new concept comes along, you know like revolution in military affairs or defense transformation that promises fast cheap and efficient war in the future we have to be very skeptical about that. the second thing, and this is a lesson i think that goes back to the gulf war and any combat experience that i've had in really all my colleagues in our army and marine corps in particular have had, is the human dimension of war and the psychological dimension of war

and the importance of training and leader development and the development of cohesive, confidence teams. right? this is important because again to quote john keegan, who found all this tremendous continuity in battle-e said that war battle is aimed at the disintegration of human groups. and so how do you build soldiers and units that can operate in environments of persistent danger and deal with all the difficulties you have to cope with, especially seeing fellow soldiers killed for example and being able to continue your mission. i think it's important for the american public to understand what it takes to build those capable cohesive confident teams. we undervalue that. i think one of the mysteries in recent months and years is don't worry about cutting the army because you know you can just regrow it when you need it. right? i think what it does is it undervalues obviously the human dimension of war. and war on land in particular

and the importance of developing leaders over time. right? you have to develop these competencies across a career. you have to train under tough realistic conditions. you have to build into training all those things that happen in combat, right? you have bad information. you rush things in combat. you have to deal with casualties. so building that friction, that uncertainty into your training so that as we say in the army operating concept our forces are ready to win in a complex world, in environments of uncertainty in environments of complexity, i think that's the second lesson that we have to really make sure we stay focused on really the moral, ethical, and psychological preparation of soldiers in units for combat. and we have to obviously inculcate into our units our army values, our ethos. when you're in these environments of persistent danger and ambiguity you have to make sure that you steel your soldiers against really what can be an erosion of their moral

character. and so that's the second big thing, i think that i've learned and i think is relevant to future armed conflict. and then the third thing i think that we've all learned is the need for us to be able to operate effectively with multiple partners. right? so that these problems we're facing isil, daesh these are the enemies of all civilized people, right? these are people who want to impose medieval order. these are people who commit mass murder as their principal tactic in a war against all civilized peoples. it is the interest of civilization in these modern-day frontiers between barbarism and civilization that we be able to work together. and the think the conference in washington to counter violent extremism is extremely important. we have to be able to develop relationships with partners, other members of the civilized world, and to do that through preparing our leaders, our army

leaders to really -- to develop empathy for others. and then also to be able to engage in what we've called in the army, we've made this a competency for our leaders cross-cultural negotiation and mediation. understanding people's interests. being able to map those interests to see the degree to which they're congruent with each other. to recognize that winning and prevailing in these sort of contests doesn't come from just capacity building, right? it's really understanding who you're working with, what their interests are, the degree to which their interests are congruent with yours, and then to be able to exert influence as well, to either alter behavior or to be able to convince people it's in our interest to take actions that are compatible with yours. we've made mistakes i think in sort of assuming that we're dealing with neutral state institutions and leaders, for example.

when we developed capacity for iraq during the time when the ministry was captured by shia militias and sulemani and the rgc were in sxharnlg this ministry and its forces had become party to a sectarian civil war and it helped create a humanitarian crisis of colossal scale. but not putting the politics in that human understanding at the center i think we inadvertently exacerbated the situation we talked about through 2006, for example. we have to operate with multiple partners but do it with our eyes open. we have to put interests and politics at the center of those engagements. i think those are three big lessons. >> okay. last question before we throw it open. again, a little bit unorthodox. could you tell us the three figures who have most influenced your understanding of war and to some extent the nature of military leadership? >> gosh.

well, there are so many. there are so many great historians. there are so many great, i mean leaders. i would say that from combat leadership in terms of leading soldiers to close with and destroy an enemy in close combat general ernest harmon is one of my heroes who commanded the second armored division in world war ii. >> tell us more about him. >> he was a cavalry man, maybe not surprising based on my background, but he made the transition from horse cavalry to preautomotive revolution in a very fassel way because he was imaginative, he understood continuities and changes, changing the character of conflict. and he was an extremely effective combat commander because he was very much attuned to the human dimension of war. so in fact he said the most important thing in combat is leadership. he said the most important thing you can do as a leader is put leaders in positions of leadership.

he wrote a great document, and i think it ought to be more widely available. i know you can probably get it on the internet. i've got a copy if you're interested. notes on combat actions in tunisia and north africa. so another great thing about harmon is he learned and learned from combat in north africa and he wrote this paper and sent it out to his colleagues and other infantry divisions and armored divisions so they could benefit from what he learned in north africa prior to the d-day invasions. and if you go through that document i used that document to prepare our cavalry troop for operations in desert storm. some fundamental things, right? he said army units are like a good football team or you could say rugby team since we're at iss. he says a good team knows about eight plays and they use these plays in combination. so battle drills right? rehearsed responses to a predictable set of circumstances in combat is what battle drills are. these are fundamental things

right? fire and maneuver. he said combat in the desert is sort of like naval -- these are things that informed our preparation in 1991, written in 1942 1943. so ernest harmon is i think one those guys. i'm trying to pick people that may not be as obvious. i think in terms of political military leadership obviously george marshall. and i think that he set the example in terms of civil military relations and civil control of the military. scholar of civil military relations knows this much better than i do. but i think he set a tremendous example for military officers to understand what your duty is and also what your duty is not. it's your job to give your best military advice but it's not your job to advocate for policy right? because nobody likes generals to make policy. and this is the key lesson to not cross that line between

advice and advocacy. it's a blurry line. it's hard to distinguish. but i think in terms of professional responsibility and adhering to civil control of the military george marshall. >> how about intrepidity, imaginative leadership, bold action? you know, it's presidents day weekend. george washington. right? george washington i think is underappreciated as a leader. i think if you just read david hackett fisher's book you get an appreciation for how he saw possibilities and opportunities which i think is a very important quality for a military leader when others only saw difficulties. right? and i think that's because he had also been a student of war and warfare. he obviously had an experience during the french and indian wars. but he really developed his

ability to lead by reading and thinking. so i think across all three of these leaders is a commitment to learning the profession and studying war as sir michael howard said to study it in width, depth, and context. so one of the things we're emphasizing in our army obviously is inculcating in our leaders a desire for lifelong learning and for reading and thinking about -- think about how arrogant it would be if you don't do that. essentially you're saying all i need is my personal experience and i'll be able to figure out any wartime situation. of course not. you have to read and think and learn continuously to be a true professional in our military and in our army. >> wonderful answer. okay. why don't we move to questions? we'd ask you to be concise. if you could identify yourself and institutional affiliation, and i believe we'll be passing microphones around. the gentleman over there. >> thank you. i'm leon weintraub.

i'm retired from the u.s. foreign service. sir, you mentioned not only achieving a military win over the enemy but also consolidating gains. along the lines of consolidation i wonder if you could discuss the issue which i believe is somewhat controversial about expanding the iraqi army and the debaathification under ambassador bremer that's been written about a lot. i'm sure you've heard about it a lot more than i have. i wonder if you could make a comment on that action. >> well these are mistakes that are very clear in retrospect. and i would call them mistakes. there are no easy solutions in iraq. obviously if you were to recall too much of the army for example, you could have exacerbated the fears of certain elements of the shia community and especially the expatriates who were coming back into the country after the collapse of the regime and maybe that could have led to other problems and so forth. so there were no easy solutions. but i do think if you look at sort of policy decisions in the

immediate military victory over the hussein regime or collapse of that regime that in retrospect it seems we were trying to make it as hard on ourselves as we could. and that's involving the decision not to recall portions of the army. of course and not recognizing that the vast -- 60% of the army was shia to begin with. that this was a symbol of national identity. to recognize war is fear honor, and interest. i would say fear sense of honor. so not recall portions of the army was a violation of sort of the sense of honor of iraqi and arab nationalists to a certain extent. and then helped this localized decentralized hybrid insurgency coalesce over time. other decisions involving severe debaathification not only within the army but outside the army exacerbated that problem. as did i think other decisions such as the makeup of the interim governing council and so

forth. so i think whenever we don't put politics in the center of a conflict and understand what is the political objective we want to achieve and have a political strategy to get there i think that was what we were able to achieve in the rewrite of the iraqi campaign plan, to catch up to the evaluation of this conflict in 2007. we were able to do it because we had david pierce, a colleague of yours, who's now an ambassador to greece. he had done the iraq study group project which was as we know, largely -- it was given the attention maybe it should have been given, right? in 2003. and then he and ambassador robert ford and toby dodge of iss wrote the political strategy. and then wrote a diplomatic strategy to deal with because these conflicts there are internal political dynamics and

external political dynamics and you have to address both, right? to be able to move them to the sustainable outcome consistent with your interests. the key is asking the right questions up front. what is the nature of the conflict, what are our vital interests at stake what are the political objectives, what is the political strategy which by 2007 became then to move toward political accommodation and to do that by establishing some mediating mechanisms that will allow us to influence that from the bottom up and from the top down. and then to develop indigenous mediating mechanisms over time to get to that political accommodation between iraq's communities that will remove support for both the shia islamic militias and al qaeda in iraq and its associates. then everything was subordinated to that. the military strategy was then to go after the so-called irreconcilables. and those if you take the negotiation mediation theory the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, you know, was we're going to kick your ass

militarily. so it would help move communities toward that political accommodation, and then of course the other element of the military strategy was to get people to stop shooting each other because it's tough to come to an accommodation when you're shooting at each other. so it was to break the cycle of violence, to work on local cease-fires, and so then it also drove our security force assistant efforts, how we're going to do development our information and communications efforts were all subordinated to a political strategy. so i think that was one of the key lessons to get back to eliot's question earlier, and i would say that we did make mistakes early in the iraq war that in many ways made it as hard on us as we could make it. >> the gentleman over there. i think you're about to get the microphone. >> steven donahue from mclarty associates. would you talk a little more about how the army is preparing its soldiers in the transition

from combat operations to the peace-time army if there is such a thing so that they don't lose their morale they maintain their proficiency, and just -- and also how we're helping our allies think about that in their own forces. >> great points. and of course you know, we were anticipating obviously a post-war period right? even just a year ago a little bit over a year ago. and if you look at what has occurred since that time, we mentioned russia and its actions earlier, i think we see that i think everybody recognizes that it's narcissistic to think if you leave a war it stops that in fact wars continue even after you leave. if you leave a movie in the middle the movie's still playing. so i think we've seen that dynamic in iraq and we're anticipating a continued

contested environment in afghanistan although i think there have been some very promising developments there regionally and with the change in national leadership there. so i think -- what i think our army recognizes and i think it's important to recognize this outside the army is that demands on land forces in a post-war period tend to go up historically. so we're in a period now where we see our army getting smaller, i think dramatically smaller, but the demand for land forces is going up. so we have about 150,000 soldiers deployed overseas now in a broad range of roles in iraq as you know and in afghanistan. but also deployed -- we've been successful as a joint force in preventing great power conflict for over 70 years that's been due in large measure to our forces positioned overseas. so we're engaged in a broad role of activities with special operations forces and

conventional forces in 120 countries right now for our army. so i think this anticipation of a period of peace and lack of engagement by land forces may be premature to say the least. so in terms of keeping our leaders challenged and engaged in that i think we see a number of challenges with which our soldiers and leaders are engaged across the globe. the other thing i will tell you though, is we are endeferring to institutionalize the lessons of the last 13 years of war. and i think our army's done a pretty good job of this in terms of our doctrine, in terms of what we've learned about combat leadership, our philosophy of mission command right? which is your decentralized operations based on mission orders, and we recognize that to deal with complexity, these kind of complex environments we need

trust up and down our chain of command. so if anybody's looking for a challenge, if anybody's looking to serve something bigger than yourselves, sign up for the u.s. army. and i think what you see is you see soldiers and leaders who are continuing to extend their service because they are aware of not just the demands on them that service place but also the less tangible rewards of service. and what are those? i think these are underappreciated by society sometimes and this is something we have to communicate more effectively. i think they come with being part of something bigger than yourself. to feel you can make a contribution to efforts that are important so i think the future of all community. and i think we can see that dramatically today and across the greater middle east, for example. and i think you also are then part of a team. you're part of the team where the man or woman next to you is

willing to give everything including their life next to you. there are tremendous rewards of service that obviously you don't really become aware of until you're part of that kind of military organization that really takes on the qualities of a family. i think as leaders we have to maintain those bonds of trust with our subordinates and leaders. we have to challenge them. soldiers typically join the army because they. it to be hard. typically they're disappointed when it's not. army does a great job challenging and bringing out the best in our young men and women. i think the reports of a period of peace during which people are going to become bored disinterested, going back to sort of peace time like rock painting or whatever it is it's not going to happen. i don't think it's going to happen. and i can't see it happening in the foreseeable future anyway. >> all the way in the back.

>> bud mcfarland. general, thanks very much for your service. in all of our conflicts in the last 40 years. and for your vision and originality of thought. i wonder if i could ask you to comment on stability in asia and how to preserve it. deterrence resolution of disputes peacefully, and how you see the role of the army in that. >> yes, sir. well, thank you for that question, sir. as you know that we have 55,000 soldiers committed to the pacific theater, which is the largest of any theaters bigger than central command. so there's this idea that with the shift in emphasis to the pacific suddenly the army's interested. the army's always been in the pacific, as we know, at least since the post -- really

preworld war 1 era. i guess post-philippines war. we've been involved in the pacific. and i think we'll continue to play a vitally important role. what does the army do in the theater security architecture of the pacific and maintaining really the security order that has led to the global economy that we've all benefited from and the security of countries in asia have benefited in free trade and stability in asia. well, i think it's going to be analogous to what we've done in the past. the army provides foundational capabilities. in the army operating concept we say we're the foundation of the joint force. and what that means is the army provides multiple options to the president and secretary of defense across all theaters. what does that mean? that means theater logistics capabilities ballistic missiles defense, intelligence capabilities, communications capabilities. but also what we provide is

really a tangible and credible commitment of the united states of america, as you know better than anybody, the role of land forces in establishing and maintaining security. i mentioned the key role in northeast asia for army forces. but i think what you see is that applies broadly throughout the region. i think in particular working through partners in asia and the dominant military service in our partner countries is the army. and so i think that that is a vitally important role. army forces conduct what we call regional engagement and regional aligned forces to develop the capability of our problems to work on interoperability. and also to send a clear message to powers in asia who would want to establish a hedgemonic order that would restrict freedom of

trade and commerce or coerce our partners in the region that it's not worth it. that there's an alternative path which is a path of not confrontation, and continuing to benefit from the economic order for which american security has provided a foundation. we also think in terms of military capabilities for a theater like the pacific where you really rely on freedom of movement and action in the air, space, maritime, and increasingly cyberspace domains, that army forces play an important role for the fundamental reason that we live on land obviously and any problems that manifest themselves in the maritime air, space domains originate on land to begin with. as technology is transferred to other countries or other countries who steal the technological capabilities, who can then challenge what has been now sort of multidecade dominance in those fluid

domains, i think it's going to be increasingly important for army forces to have the capability to conduct what we call expeditionary maneuver. expeditionary maneuver is the deployment of forces into unexpected locations with the appropriate combinations of mobility, protection, and lethality. to defeat an enemy organization and establish control of territory, to deny its use to the enemy to secure populations and to consolidate gains. but increasingly to project power outward from land into the maritime, air, and space domains tone sure movement and action of our joint forces. and so restrict use of those domains by our enemies. we spend a lot worrying about this obviously and the office of net assessment and other think tanks in the region -- in d.c. have worked on this, how we develop and answer that. i think the army plays a very

important role as part of the joint force in that. from a military operations perspective i think the term i would use is expeditionary maneuver and i think maneuver's important. i think when we look at theaters oftentimes we tend to look at potential military operations as a big targeting exercise. and we reduce war to a bunch of targets that we then engage with standout capabilities. and what we fail to recognize is what is important in coercing an enemy or -- thomas schilling identified this decades ago. is you need to have available a brute force option. standout capabilities without land power capabilities leave decisions in the hands of an adversary. land force capabilities play a complementary roll to the joint force standout capabilities because you demonstrate commitment and you're also able

to do positive things on land. those positive things can be bolstering the capabilities of allies as i mentioned developing their capability and so forth. i see the army as today having a very important role in asia in terms of theater security architecture. and as i mentioned, it's the largest commitment of soldiers abroad, of any theater. and i see it maybe growing in importance depending on the behavior of other powers in the region and the threats that they pose to international security and to our partners and allies. >> thank you very much. and thanks for a fantastic brief. as always just fascinating to hear you speak. and very humbling to hear your perspectives and experience. my name's david uco, i'm an associate professor at cisa the

national defense university. my question relates to the institutionalization of capabilities. it strikes me that the army has learned many hard-won lessons in the last 10, 15 years of operations and in so doing have had to rely on various ad hoc mechanisms to fill enduring capabilities gaps. we can think of the human terrain teams or even the provisional reconstruction teams. and also the capabilities required to advise and assist and really mentor security forces and host nations. i was wondering we're not going back from an era of warfare, as you rightfully have pointed out, but in the aftermath of what we call the iraq and operations what efforts have been made to institutionalize some of the capabilities needed within the army? how do you see those efforts progressing? at the sam time the army's being shrunk. >> i'm going to dow give a fairly brief answer because we're running up on 11:30. is that a hard stop?

it's a somewhat flexible stop. i'm going to throw one more question at you after you answer this one. >> it's a great question. the army's done quite a bit. adaptation in conflict will always outpace the institution's ability to sort of absorb and make permanent some of those adaptations. the institutional army is catching up. to those hardwoman lessons. but our doctrine has changed. what's the implications of that across all our manuals. in the army our brigade manual which is an important manual has new chapters. the first is on understanding the environment. understanding the conflict. understanding the local dynamics within a particular area. we used to think if you go back to the old days, you see yourself, the enemy in context of the terrain, i've got it. no it's also in context of the human dynamics and the political dynamics and the cultural and ideological and religious and so

forth, and tribal dynamics. so we've institutionalized that in our doctrine. we've also institutionalized it in our training. and in the tasks and competencies we develop in our leaders. so our army has come one an army leader development strategy that emphasizes language and religion and culture and that kind of understanding from the very beginning, from precommissioning all the way through to kernel once you become part of the problem and you're hard wired. so we get that going early in leaders' careers, and for non-commissioned officers as well. so leader development is a huge aspect of all of this. a lot of those include resiliency training and training for advanced cognition and to be able to identify the presence or absence of advanced wires training. that's all institutionalized now in programs and instruction. sought first manifestation of all of this is these are sort of

add-ons. now they're integrated into all of our training, into our scenarios and our educational opportunities. our training environments. we have an organization called the training brain operation center. how cool is that right? the tboc. basically what this operation does, the tboc is it takes big data from conflicts and klattifies it and genericizes it and unclassifies it. applies it to different terrain and simulations. and now we have the rich texture of a complex environment and all that data that feeds into our exercises as well. we see this in our combat training centers. we're not going to go back on this. some people say we need to go back to the basics. we need to go back to fighting wars as we would like to fight them. rather than as they are. no. we're not going to do that. so i think we've made great strides in ensuring that we institutionalize a lot of our lessons in leader competencies and leader development, in

training and doctrine and organization as well. i think with the changes to our brigade and other organizations. so it's a work in progress. i think we're getting better all the time. the one thing i would highlight in the army operating concept and ask you to read it is, just one of the perks of coming to iss, there are some free copies in the back. but the -- in here we've also established a framework for learning. the army learns enthusiastically but oftentimes not with a lot of finesse. and so an ability maybe to organize what we've learned, right? we have all these lessons, right? how do we combine these lessons into a body of knowledge that we can use to improve our capabilities? so what we've said is we know we're going to be wrong about future war. sir michael howard said no matter how hard you try you're going to be off the mark. the key is not to be so far off the mark you can't adjust as the demands of real conflict are revealed to you. ask the right questions. so in the army operating concept we've asked 20 first order questions, the answers to which will improve current and future

force combat effectiveness. the first of those is one you alluded to in your question, which is how to develop and sustain a high degree of situational understanding against adaptive enemies in complex environments. now, we're never going to solve with our multinational partners, with our civilian partners in state and aid. i mean, then we can -- we can really advance our -- our capability in that area. that's what we have done to institutionalize. we have a framework for learning. we have venues for learning which we are calling force 2025 maneuvers, that is all of our war gaming but also practical experience, it is exercises, multinational exercises, interoperability work ber doing and a police to put all this right, and work together athe relevant communities to develop training, personnel, facilities, integrated solutions, interim

solutions to those problems. and so, i'm really excited this. something our chief of staff has driven. so you talk about innovation, the buzz word these days. it ought to be right? we want to innovate. what we have said is innovation, a tenet in our army operating concept. innovation is turning ideas or experiences, as you're alluding to, into valued outcomes right? not just having an idea, turning into a valued outcome, a qualitative aspect to it but a temporal dimension. we say in the army, we have to innovate vast enough to stay ahead of determined and adaptive enemies. we are endef attorney general try to adapt faster and innovate bet we are a high degree of clarity. and i'm excited about -- to be a part of that effort in our army. >> let me ask you the last question. understanding the politics is uncertain and warfare even more so. still, if you had to guess what

are the way -- the ways in which you think the next war will actually be very different from iraq and afghanistan? >> okay. well, all right here's some of the things i'm concerned about in terms of keeping pace with changes in the character of warfare, i would say. so, what would be different? i think what we are seeing is we are seeing our enemies emulate what we have seen as our differential advantages. so, our enemies really do four things, i think, four things we have to consider that are changes in the character of warfare. the first thing they are going to do as i mentioned, avoid our cape pits, right? so on land you know, you have tens of thousands of so-called targets, not targets on land they are people and all of them are trying to avoid being classified as such right? so, we have to consider the counter measures that we have seen adopted now and i think we have seen harbingers of future conflict in what we see today and that is business persian, could be sealment, intermingle with civilian population and evade our cape pits we have to be prepared for.

this our network strike capabilities, our communications capabilities, our depend dense on certain sort of technological advantages i think are going to be at risk. we think our enemies are going to emulate our cape pits, this is one of the things i'm concerned about, right? access to commercial satellite imagery, unmanned aerial systems, right, and swarm capabilities associated with autonomous and autonomous systems, long-range missile cape pits.

i think this is a tremendous offensive capability by potential enemies an nag douse to the v 1 and v 2 threat to world war one and two scud missile threat to 1991 israel and rocket threat lebanon israel or the rocket threat out of gas florida. and i think what we are going to see increasingly is enemies using these long-range missile capabilities in urban areas, restrictive terrain going to demand joint force answer to this, right? what was the answer to v 1, v 2 threat, the answer to the scud misle? >> wasn't just standoff capabilities. enemies got to be prepared to contribute to through expedition expeditionary maneuver capabilities. and i think our enemies are going to expand to other battle grounds as they have already. this is the patel ground of political subversion the connection of our ennoise transnational organized crime networks. again, we see harbingers of this already. we need better integration of

civilian interorganizational capabilities, right, threat if is going to be more important than ever. i think -- i think the ability to intergreat law enforcement with military operations we need to ramp that up right? along the lines of what treasury does treasury's limited in their capacity i think an example what we can do from an interdepartmental perspective. i think what we have to do we have to be able to get better at defeating enemy organizations through the road range of cape pits that come with all of the elements of national power and organized to do that. so, we have to look at these organizations and analyze them based on who they are, what they are trying to achieve, what is their strategy to achieve it? then we have to map these networks, right, in terms of nodes and the net abortion and the roles, but see flows through these networks internationally of people, money, weapons often narcotics and other -- other commodities.

if we have a name and address and they are a threat, we can deal with that. but how about other authorities we can bring to bear? law enforcement authorities, you know extra territorial jurisdiction, you know, and authorities that we can be brought to bear, travel bans, visa denials you know, targeted economic sanctions, and so i recommend the book "treasury's war" is extremely good.

sheema keen done great bork. transparency national does great work on it. how do we go after these networks? ultimate question we ask what are the sources of strength for the networks and what are their vulnerabilities? these groups so-called supposed to be religious groups i think they are criminal not only pause they commit mass murder of innocent people but pause they relied on criminality for their source of strength and for their funding and ability to mobilize resources. so i see greater threats. i see greater threats to international security that emerge from these sort of high pride organizations and i see great demands on our forces because what we have seen in the past is our asymmetrical advantages may not be our advances, so we have to work more effectively as a joint team to counter enemies who take -- who evade our capabilities, who disrupt our capabilities, who expand on to those other battle grounds and emulate our

capabilities. >> you described a pretty daunting world. i will just say, speaking for myself, but i think for a lot of other people as well i'm glad you are one of the people who is going to be living the army through it. so thank you very much. >> thanks. thank you. [ applause ] the political landscape has changed with the 114th congress. not only are there 43 new republicans and 15 new democrats in the house and 12 new republicans and one new democrat in the senate, there's also 108 with imin congress including the first african-american republican in the house and the first woman veteran in the senate. keep track of the members of congress using congressional chronicle on c-span.org. the congressional chronicle page has lots of useful information there, including voting results and statistics about each session of congress. new congress best access, on c-span c-span2, c-span radio and c-span.org.

here are some of our featured programs for this weekend on the c-span networks. saturday starting at 1 p.m. eastern, c-span2's book tv is live from the university of arizona for the tucson festival of books, featuring discussions on race and politics, the civil war and by the nation magazine writers with call-ins throughout the day with authors. sunday at 1, we continue our live could have ram of the festival with panels on the obama administration, the future of politics and the issue of concussion in football. and saturday morning at 9 eastern on american history tv on c-span3 we are live from longwood university in farmville, virginia, for the 16th annual civil war seminar with historians and authors talking about the closing weeks of the civil war in 1865. and sunday morning at 9, we continue our live coverage of the seminar with remarks on the surrender of the confederacy and the immigration of confederates to brazil. find our complete television schedule at c-span.org and let

us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments at c-span.org or send us a tweet at c-span #comments. join the c span conversation, like us on facebook follow us on twitter. coming up tonight on c-span3, a look at the 2016 budget requests for justice department enforcement agencies. then a discussion on surface transportation policy at the annual american public transportation association policy conference. after that, another panel from the that forum with transportation department officials discussing rail and transit initiatives. and later, a panel of retired u.s. generals describes what the israel military and hamas did right and wrong during last summer's conflict in dpazgaza.

officials talk about combatting terrorism cyber attacks and drug trafficking. this runs an hour and 45 minutes.

>> they will later testify about their agencies' 2016 budget request. this morning, i want to begin by thanking the men and women of the fbi the marshals service, the dea and atf who work every day to protect this nation. we are indebted to them and grateful forever their service and sacrifice n particular, i want to express my condolences to the family of deputy u.s. marshal josie wells who was

killed in line of duty on tuesday while participating in a fugitive task force in baton rouge rouge, will a l.a. deputy marshal wells was attached to the marshal southern district office in mississippi and had dutifully volunteered for this recent task force. our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and the entire marshals service community for their loss here. the constantly changing landscape of criminal activity at home and abroad challenged the justice's department ability to deal with the emerging threats. we expect federal law enforcement agencies to be more anymore pell and sophisticated than the criminals and terrorists they pursue. the goal of this joint law enforcement hearing is to determine how the 2016 budget would give law enforcement agencies the tools and capabilities to tackle those changing threats, whether they are cyber attacks drug trafficking, financial fraud or

terrorism. i believe our federal law enforcement agencies must work together, particularly in tough budget environments to target limited resources in a manner that safe guards taxpayers' dollars while preserving public safety. the fbi's mission includes protecting and defending the united states against terrorism and foreign intelligence threats, fighting cyber crime as well as tending to traditional criminal activities such as violent crime, public corruption and white collar crime. in order to carry out these priorities, the fbi's 2016 budget request is $8.5 billion, which is an increase of $47 million above the 2015 enacted amount. in the past year, we've seen terrorist threats and increased cyber attacks. i believe it's imperative that the fbi appropriately balances the bureau's diverse responsibilities while targeting

the highest needs and criminal threats facing our nation. the marshal's service has the honor of being america's oldest federal law enforcement agency. the marshals provide judicial security, apprehend fugitives and protect witnesses and transport prisoners, among other important duties. the 2016 budget request of $2.7 billion for the marshal service is $100 million less than the 2015 enacted level of $2.8 billion. the funding reductions are largely isolated to the federal prisoner detention account. i want to hear how the 15 budget requests will allow the marshall service to continue its critical missions for the pursuit -- pursuit and arrest of fugitive tax offenders who are targeting our children. the drug enforcement administration's 2016 budget

request totals $2.5 billion. the agency serves a central role in our society, working with domestic and international partners in enforcement and control of substance laws and regulations of the united states. in addition, the dea's diversion control program prevents, detects and investigates the diversion of controlled pharmaceuticals and listed chemicals. this mission is critical with prescription drug abuse arguably being the country's fastest growing drug problem. the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms and explosives is tasked with combatting illegal use and trafficking of firearms, illegal use and storage of explosives and acts of arson and bombings, among other crime-fighting roles. atf's 2016 budget request is $1.3 billion, which is $60 million above the '15 level.

i'm interested in how the agency would use this increased funding, particularly in light of recent complaints from hunters and sportsmen who believe that atf overstepped its authority by attempting to ban certain ammunition for recreation use. i look forward to hearing the views and explanations of the witnesses for the details of their 2016 funding totals and working with our committee members to prioritize necessary funding for our federal law enforcement agencies. at this point, i'd like to recognize my friend and colleague, senator mikulski, former chairman of the committee. >> thank you, mr. chairman, for this hearing today and really bringing the full complement of federal law enforcement before the committee, not only to review their budget, but so we could first of all truly express

our appreciation. and we do appreciate every single man and woman who works for the agencies represented here today are so much valued and so much appreciated and they should do that. and i think we need to do that in three ways. number one, give them respect and respect them and the sacrifices they do and their families do every single day while they're often away protecting us. number two, let's have the right resources and let's make sure we don't do another sequester where fbi agents were digging into their pocket to pay for gasoline and dea agents wondering what they could do to do their job, and while we're looking at the sequester, how we go after the sexual predators and the judges.

and the wonderful lab in adelphi, the forensics lab, not only what you're enforcing but able us to identify we had few years ago came from a single gun through the forensics that you did. it's that. some carry a gun, some work with a microscope, all are on their job and i wanted to say that. tomorrow, i will be at a maryland montgomery county chamber of commerce event in which they honor those who provide public safety, firefighters and also police officers. the baltimore field office, mr. comey, will be receiving an award for being the best public safety partner. it's not only what you do, how you do it, actually engaged in the community, leveraging the assets of both the federal government and state and local, where everybody's best at what they're best at and best at what they're most needed for. so we appreciate that.

and of course, we want to express our condolences to the death of deputy marshal jose wells, killed in the line of fire, and, of course, we wish our police officers in ferguson a good recovery. so we've got a big job to do. and the we way we start, with respect, i believe with the right resources. while we're looking at the law enforcement agencies of the fbi, dea and atf, make up most -- half of the justice department's budget. close to $15 billion. i think that's a bargain. i think that's a tremendous bargain for what we get in the way you are out there protecting america. there's only a modest increase in here of $98 million, and i'm concerned whether that enables you to keep on hiring the people

that you need to do the job, to be able to sustain the effort with the people that you hire. and also, will we be able to do the cost of living adjustments for the people who work with you, whether they're agents, intelligence analysts or computer analysts. these needed increases come in the context of the president's request. yes, we do know it's above the caps and we will be having a robust discussion. while there are many calling and pounding the table, let's lift the caps on defense, a needed debate, there's another way we need to defend america. we need to defend america in the streets and neighborhoods of our communities and we need to defend them from sexual predators. we need to defend them from murderers and killers. we need to defend them against the lone wolf who could be roaming around one of our big

cities or small towns. so, if you want to protect america, you not only want to lift the defense caps, you want to lift the domestic caps and have parity with that. and i want you to know i feel very strongly about it. and when i say i didn't want to run again because i didn't want to raise money but raise hell, this is one of the areas that i'm going to raise hell about and we're going to do it here today. so we look forward to hearing what it is you need for those resources. we count on you to be able to do this job. i could go through the data, which i will, when we get to the questions. two areas i hope we could also focus on, in addition to your specific mission, of course, is the heroin crisis that we hear from every governor, including my own in maryland. we look to work with our governor. yes, he's a republican and, yes, i'm a democrat, but we're 100% marylanders and we're 100% involved in dealing with heroin.

and, of course, the women of the senate joining with very good men are now focusing on the issue of human trafficking. and we look forward to hearing it. but i need to know what are the right resources for you to be best attitude what you're best at and be best at what you're needed for and we best better get our act together and make sure we support you. i look forward to the dialogue. >> thank you. we will start the hearing testimony with fbi director comey and then go right to left. we welcome all of you. your written testimony will be made part of the record, if you will sum up your remarks. director comey, welcome again. >> thank you. nice to be here. vice chairman mikulski and senators. thank you for the opportunity to sit with three, i would say old friends, but i don't want to criticize anyone, people i've worked with for many years more than we'd like to admit and appreciate your expression of condolence for the marshal's

service, terrible loss. it's a reminder of the people we have and risk they take to protect this country. so, we're very grateful for that. the fbi's 2016 budget request is about maintaining the capabilities that you have given us. it's about being good stewards of the taxpayer's money and make sure we recover from the effects of sequester by filling the ranks that were so depleted over the past couple of years. there are two enhancements requested in our budget, each for about $10 million. one relates to our cyber capabilities, trying to build those and the second to our efforts to integrate better in a technological way with this the rest of the intelligence community community. as the rest of you know, the fbi like my colleagues here, it's all about the people. 70% of our budget goes to our good folks. we have remarkable men and women who are working 24 hours a day all around this world to protect this country and its citizens. the members of this committee are very well aware of the

threats the fbi is responsible for addressing. counterterrorism remains at the top of our list, for reasons that make good sense. the world of terrorism has shifted just in my 18 months on this job, particularly in the growth and flourishing in ungoverned or lightly governed spaces of the progeny of al qaeda, most predominantly with isil and use of groups like isil and aqap with sophisticated technology and social media to spread their poison, to attract recruits to their so-called caliphate and to try to motivate people who don't travel to do harm to people in the united states. this poses an enormous challenge to us to find the people responding to that siren song and track those traveling and find those who may be motivating to radicalize and stay in place but engage in murderous behavior in the name of some misguided effort to find meaning in their lives. so counterterrorism remains at

the top of our list for reasons i know the american people appreciate. as chairman shelby mentioned, we also have responsibility for counterintelligence. the spy game is not a thing of 1950s or '60s. it is alive and well. increasingly, as with all the threats, it is manifesting on the internet. cyber dominates the fbi's life and have to be digitally literate to protect kids, fraud, terrorism, protect critical infrastructure and our secrets. we're working very hard to make sure we have the workforce and technology and we're deployed in a smart way to be able to deal with the threats that come at us through the internet, which is all the threats we're responsible for. and we spend a tremendous amount of time working with our partners here at this table to address a variety of criminal threats. vice-chairman mikulski mentioned our efforts to protect children. we work very hard on that to fight public corruption, as

chairman shelby said, and a host of other efforts we do around the country. we do them almost entirely in partnerships with federal partners and state and local partners. there is literally nothing the fbi does alone. we accomplish great good but do it in partnership with lots of other folks. i want to close just mentioning a couple of our capabilities this committee has supported that don't get the attention, in my view, that they deserve. the first is tedac. it is the analysis center for improvised explosive devices used by terrorists around the world. it is a tremendous resource for this country and our allies. we are putting together a world-class facility in huntsville, alabama, so we can do with explosive devices the way we do fingerprints, to connect the dots and save lives. i had a chance to visit recent

recently for the commitment to keep our allies safer and i appreciate your support. and we have the hazardous devices school for today and tomorrow to diffuse devices and protect the american people. two tremendous resources that don't get much attention. i'll mention one other. in the great state of west virginia, we have thousands of people working at our criminal investigation services department, our division, which is literally the frame on which hangs the law enforcement of this country. they run the information sharing, they run the fingerprint database, they run the dna database, they run the sharing of vital information that protects law enforcement officers. i told them when i visited them, your work to a lot of people sounds boring. it is only boring because it works so well. we take it for granted that this work will be there so when a cop pulls somebody over and runs their name or their fingerprints, they know immediately whether that's a rapist or terrorist or fugitive and people are protected by virtue of that. they are underappreciated but the are the frame that hangs law

enforcement of this country and we are hugely grateful for the support of this committee for our west virginia colleagues. with that, i'll stop and thank you again. this committee has been tremendously supportive of the fbi. we recognize it and our great folks are extraordinarily grateful for the support we've gotten from the committee and i look forward to taking your questions. >> thank you. miss hilton. >> thank you, mr. chairman. well, good morning, everyone, and i want to start by thanking you for your recognition of deputy jose wells, who we lost this past tuesday. he was, without a doubt, one of our finest. he was a young man committed to our fugitive investigation operations. he was a young man who worked to make our country safer. his loss was really unbearable for all of us but you can imagine his family.

deputy wells came from a long line of law enforcement. his father is a retired law enforcement officer from mississippi and his two brothers currently serve as local law enforcement police officers. we will stand with them as we will support them as we bid farewell to jose as this weekend we recognize yet another fallen u.s. marshal service hero. our total request includes $1.2 billion for salaries and expenses and $1.5 billion for detention and $15 million for construction of federal courthouses nationwide. the agency's many accomplishments over the years, as we celebrate our 225th anniversary this year, recently would not have been possible without your support, from this committee in particular. in recent years, you have acknowledged and provided resources for us to safely guard the nation's federal prison inmate and detention populations. and you recognize the importance of those resources.

over the past year, we had worked carefully to assess the agency's spending, and where necessary, make improvements and reduce costs. the usms has also benefitted from this committee's decision to restore our resources in 2014 on salaries and expenses. this allowed us to fill 200 vacant u.s. marshals and i thank you for that support. i can assure you that we take our fiduciary responsibilities very seriously. and we will work the office of management and budget and with your staffs to submit a moderate budget mindful of our country's financial situation. in doing so, we have worked proactively to creatively address our shortfalls and use existing resources, to ensure officer safety. aside from retaining a small carryover from the detention

balance the u.s. marshal service worked to make sure a significant amount are made available to the administration and congress for other purposes. it is my ongoing focus to ensure that we be as efficient and effective as we can within the dollars that are given to us and a priority to take transformational steps to make the marshal service to be a data-driven agency to make strategic and tactical business decisions. ultimately, this is helping us present a performance-based budget to show how we are managing our resources appropriated from congress. the '16 budget that you have in front of you provides the necessary resources to maintain and enhance you spoke about today, arresting violent fugitives, protecting our children and reducing crime in our communities. enforcing law enforcement in the communities is still a paramount concern for the marshal services as we see more violence in our

federal courthouses and federal judiciary. we saw it in wheeling, west virginia, saw it recently at a judge's home in the florida in the middle of the night, the judge just barely escaping the shooting and his family and the violence in the courthouses in the shooting in utah. you can see it play across the media and violent criminals introduced to our court system pose a great risk to our judiciary. the '16 budget increases our enforcement efforts for law enforcement as we provide safety to our officers, as we try to work and ensure we can meet the requirements under the adam walsh child protection safety act. the national center for missing and exploited children estimates over 769,000 sex offenders live in the united states, of which i am proud to say we have apprehended at least probably close to 12,000 annually, brought them into compliance,

because over 100,000 of those 769 are not in compliance. it is my top priority in this agency as we have lost too many and every effort is made to ensure personnel are adequately equipped. along with those at the table and my partners, as director comey stated, we're collectively together, we the marshal service apprehended warrants for more than 105,000 violent fugitives a year. deputy marshals who risk their lives arresting and apprehending those who flee from justice that are wanted. we are requesting $1.5 million for law enforcement training so we may keep that effort. the committee has recognized the urgent need to contain proliferation of gangs across our country. criminal gang activity has a severe impact on law enforcement because of the high-rising level of violence we see. gangs are no longer isolated to motorcycle gangs and violent urban street gangs.

they are now in existing in suburban and rural communities, socially economically depressed communities and over more than 1 million members are criminally active in the united states. this is something we all want to address. our '16 budget request has an increase of $5.2 million for a total of $15 million for federal courthouses as i spoke earlier about the situation we face to make sure to mitigate the risks of the public that attend those courthouses and the judiciary. mr. chairman, ranking member mikulski and members of the subcommittee, i do request your support to fully fund the '16 budget request to support the men and women of the marshal service you recognized earlier to carry out the protection efforts of our judicial process. and we have proven ourselves a valuable asset to our communities, ensuring public safety and protecting our children. thank you. >> good morning, chairman

shelby, ranking member mikulski and members of the subcommittee. i want to start by thanking ranking member mikulski for her many years of leadership and dedicated service to our country. you have been a trailblazer for women in the senate, and i am especially thankful for your support of dea's museum's traveling exhibit that went to the maryland science center in baltimore last year. over 350,000 people visited the exhibit during the seven-month run. and they learned not just about law enforcement but also the science behind drugs, addiction and recovery. dea is in mourning this morning after hearing the news of deputy jose wells and we offer all our assistance to director hilton. the support of this committee has led to the arrest of many

violent drug traffickers. this is exemplified by the recent arrest of cervando gomez martinez also known as latuta and omar morales. these arrests are another win for mexico in the fight against brutal criminal cartels like the knights templar and lasettas. and these arrests along with last year's capture of joaquin guzman signal major steps forward in our shared fight against drug trafficking and violence. since the department of justice began coordinating efforts against the most known wanted drug traffickers in 2003, there have been 183 identified around the world. cumulatively, over three-quarters have been indicted in the united states. over half have been arrested here or abroad, and one-third have been extradited to the united states to face justice. in fiscal year 2014 alone, we

saw several successes against them, including seven who were extradited to the united states, one surrendered to the united states' authorities and six more who were arrested and are in custody outside the united states. historically, the image of organized crime in the united states was of hierarchal organizations exerting influence over criminal activities at the local levels, with cells of loosely affiliated groups. that still remains true today. however, these organizations now have direct connections to mexican drug trafficking organizations to distribute heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana and other drugs throughout the country. this is the new face of organized crime. the violence perpetrated by these groups harms communities across the united states and dea

is uniquely positioned to target and dismantle the distribution cells and traffic organizations with whom they conspire. of notable concern is the alarming level of heroin use and abuse in this country and increases in heroin-related deaths. after years of declining use, the availability and abuse of heroin is now increasing, especially among younger americans. this is due in part to the increased production of heroin in mexico, even as colombian production has declined. and in 2013, 8,257 people died of a heroin overdose, nearly tripling since 2010. a contributing factor to increasing demand for heroin is prescription opioid abuse. prescription drug abuse is a nationwide epidemic. overall, 43,982 people have died

of a drug overdose in the united states in 2003. that was more than half of which involved prescription drugs. these deaths represent not just a statistic, but they are our family members, our friends, our neighbors and our colleagues. and if we look at the operational successes we are having today, coupled with the decline in overall drug use, there is reason for optimism. since its high point in 1979, the overall rate of elicit drug illicit drug use in america has dropped by over 30%. by taking harmful drugs off the street, dismantling major drug organizations and seizing profits we are making our nation a safer place to live and to do business. the support of this subcommittee is critical to our success. so i look forward to working with you and would be happy to answer any of your questions. thank you.

>> good morning, chairman shelby, ranking member mikulski and members of the committee. thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today with my colleagues. this is a great team that i'm privileged to work with within the department of justice. i think together, we are moving forward to enhance public safety around the country on behalf of the citizens that we serve. i'm also pleased to be here to discuss the president's fy 2016 budget request for atf. atf's principal mission is to protect our communities from violent criminals who illegally possess and use firearms, use explosives for illicit purposes and engage in deadly acts of arson. we accomplish our mission through partnerships and through the enforcement of the criminal law and regulations of firearms and explosives industry. this makes us somewhat unique among u.s. law enforcement. and we have a long history of maintaining working relationships, not only with our federal partners, but with our state and local partners. and we put a premium on those partnerships.

the public safety agencies, the industry groups and the community organizations that we work with are vital to us being able to accomplish our mission. when serious violent crime happens at communities across the country, atf is there working side by side with our partners. in the past three years alone, atf has been at the front line against crime helping our partners investigate the boston marathon bombing, the horrific mass shootings in aurora, colorado, newtown, connecticut, and the washington navy yard as well as assisting in thousands of other investigations that have simply not made the national news. atf's work with its partners is producing tangible results in communities across the country. our discussion today, i hope, leads to some help for you all in sustaining the results we have accomplished in various places around the country.

for example, we recently completed an enhanced enforcement operation in new haven and bridgeport, connecticut and chicago, illinois. in both circumstances, we have made an impact working with our state and local colleagues on diminishing and lowering violent crime in those communities. we accomplished this not only through manpower and strong partnerships but by also leveraging our technology resources, such as nybin, the national integrated ballistics informational network. this technology compares high-resolution cartridge cases, the senator alluded to it earlier, recover from multiple crime scenes and compares and contrasts and follow the gun strategy to identify the worst of the worst offenders in communities. and this technology has been integrated with e-trace and we are, in certain communities around the country, test driving crime gun intelligence centers. it's showing very promising results. atf's contributions to public safety extend beyond these operational successes though.

as director comey mentioned, tedac is in huntsville. we have our national training for explosive training and research there, established through the members of this committee and it's performing important work. by the end of fy 2016, it will significantly increase its staffing by 30% and work on increasing fire and arson investigation in addition to explosives research. because we are getting healthier as an organization over the last several years, we will offer several courses that haven't been offered because training is usually the first thing to go when you have tough budget times unfortunately. in addition, we will be bringing our u.s. bomb data center from atf here in washington, d.c., and put it in the cedar facility in an effort to make sure we are not only fully integrating our capacity but collaborating at the highest levels with the

fbi's terrorist explosive device analytic center that is down there. another important atf asset, our fire research lab in maryland is currently involved in research of several high-profile fire incidents. i want to thank this committee for the support that that lab has. it's sort of an unsurprisingly to me, as i've learned across the country, our arson capacity is something that's a great treasure to federal law enforcement. we've worked on several significant arson investigations with state and locals trying to figure out what happened. we are performing tests recently on the west texas fertilizer plant that killed 15 first responders and injured 160. and we're currently looking at the horrific fire that happened several months ago in annapolis that killed a grandmother, grandfather and their grandchildren, trying to determine some of the things with christmas trees.

and this kind of research is taken care of very quietly, but would be very helpful to public safety across the board. to support this important work, and i look forward to discussing it further, atf's 2016 budget request totals $1.26 billion, including 5100 permanent positions, nearly half of which are special agents. and this request includes 52 million increase in base resources that really is focused, as director comey mentioned, on our human capital. atf has a very experienced special agent workforce. within the next three years, we will have nearly 35% of that workforce be either mandatory or eligible for retirement. and so we need to do all we can over the next several years, including to this budget cycle, to refresh and get new agents out there before the senior agents leave. i look forward to answering your questions. and i do want to maybe set the table here as a preemptive.

the chairman mentioned about in our regulatory effort, a proposal that we posted -- requested comments on for the last 30 days. that comment period will close. it involved not -- it involved an exemption for a particular type of .556 round. we've gotten nearly 90,000 comments. we will assess those comments and working with you, with others, see how we can really address what was at the genesis of that posting, which was an effort to address nearly 30 exemption requests and finding a framework for dealing with that. with that said, i see the time is over and i will be happy to answer any questions that you have. >> thank you. thank you very much. i'll direct my first question to you. on february 13th, the atf released a proposed framework that would have eliminated the

m855 green tip ammunition from the sporting purposes. this week, the atf abandoned this proposal. a lot of us are troubled that the atf's process and intent regarding this proposed ban. i've heard from numerous constituents who use this ammunition for shooting sport and hunting and they're strongly opposed to the ban, as you know. additionally, it's concerning to a lot of us that the new federal firearms regulation reference guide published in january inexplicably removed m-855 ammunition from the exemption list for sporting purposes. why did the atf propose this m-855 ban when such ammunition has been allowed under sporting purposes exemption for many, many years? >> senator, thank you for the question. i think it's important for everyone to understand again that the genesis of us putting that framework proposal up for

public comment was our good-faith effort to try and construct a framework to deal with nearly 30 exemptions that we have had in the queue for many, many years at atf. we do have a responsibility to regulate. we can't stick our head in the sand with respect to the additional exemption requests. the m-885 exemption has been in place for nearly 30 years. it was a classification that atf made on that particular round. and i want to make sure everybody understands that this was not -- contrary to some of the blogosphere and effort to completely ban that certain type of cartridge. it's this one particular green tip that is, in essence, military surplus, that under leopa does qualify as armor piercing but has had an exemption for 30 years and been in the market and used for sporting purposes for the last 30 years. and so our request for input on

a framework was our effort to try and get a transparent process that we could act on the nearly 30 other exemptions that were there and not sort of not look at the exemption that was out there on m-885. and so, you know, i think the reality of it is we need to deal with the pending exemptions. there aren't going to be any new exemptions granted until we work our way out through this. the exemption for m-885 has been there for 30 years and will remain. >> you abandoned it this week, did you not? >> we're going to take the input in. we are not going to move forward without analyzing the nearly 90,000 comments from all spectrums with a sense of figuring out how we do this rationally, in a common sense way that, first and foremost for us, protects our law enforcement officers in compliance with leopa.

>> i'll direct this question to the fbi director. you talked about earlier the terrorist explosive device analytical center we call tdac and so forth and how important it is. what is tdac's operational and construction status at this point? when will the facility be fully operational, do you know? >> i think we're on track, senator, to open it sometime late this spring or in summer. i went down there to check on its progress because i'm keenly interested in it. the building's up, looks good to me but other things to be done for it to be ready. we have had some delays because our contractor has struggled with some of the unique technical requirements we need to deal with explosives in that building. my understanding we're on track for no later than summer opening. >> how is the atf working cooperatively with you, with the fbi on this? are they putting their good offices forward to work with you

and cooperate with the fbi regarding tdac? >> yes, as they always do. as director jones said, one of the hallmarks of atf, they are a great partner in a whole host of ways and they are with tdac. >> director jones, you reference in cedar a few minutes ago. where are we exactly on that, as far as staffing the program we call it the national center for explosives training and research? >> you know, i've had an opportunity -- >> you mentioned this earlier in your testimony. >> i've had an opportunity on a number of occasions to go to in cedar, a wonderful facility for our organization and asset. i think when tdac is up and running and what we've done at in cedar and what we plan to do expands beyond the explosive training and research, focusing primarily on homemade ieds and some of the research there has expanded into the fire and arson

realm, not to -- we have a great lab in ammendale and doing work down there and that necessitates us moving additional personnel down there. and i think the main thing is that we're finally going to move the u.s. bomb data center personnel from washington down there to in cedar as originally envisioned and that's going to happen this year. >> one last question to the fbi director. how is the fbi responding from the army's separation from the hazardous device school they sent word, as i understand it where they had a partnership there and the army indicated they would no longer provide personnel to the school but i think that's an important operation there. >> i agree completely, mr. chairman. we're working with them to see if there are folks they will no longer have there as part of their complement that can come work for us so we don't lose the

expertise and our overall commitment is not to lose any capability there. as you know, with the support of this committee, we're expanding that facility because there's such a hunger for advanced bomb tech training. >> thank you. >> thank you. i want to compliment you on the fact we will continue the tradition of a classified hearing after this because so much of what we want to do about counterterrorism and organized crime are questions in that setting and thank you very much for being able to provide us with that opportunity. i've got essentially two questions. one i want to raise is about heroin. i have a significant issue in maryland, and it's been raised by our local dea people as well as governor hogan.

we heard a place like vermont has declared it a state of the state issue. in fiscal '15, this committee requested that the doj convene a task force to come up with a comprehensive federal solution of law enforcement, health care treatment and prevention, not only law enforcement. director comey, you told me that it had been handed to the dea, is that right? are you -- could you tell me what dea is doing? and are you the task force that i asked for? because we've gotten very little feedback about it. >> sure, i'd be glad to address that. the task force you called for was not tasked to dea. but i do know that the department has been looking at it and actually has convened some meetings that we have attended to put together -- >> is there a department of justice task force? i'll ask the attorney general, that you know of, that has the task force that we asked for?

>> i know that they have had meetings with people outside the department and within the department -- >> okay. >> -- and have gathered -- >> so they didn't do it. we'll come back to that. could you tell us what you're doing though, miss leonhart? >> sure. europe is the perfect example of what it's going to take for our country to stem the flow of the rising heroin problem. as you know, in maryland, your heroin deaths nearly doubled. and in fact, when you look at all overdose deaths in maryland last year, the majority of them were actually heroin overdoses. so we very quickly and have over the past year, we put together a local task force. we have one in baltimore. we have a similar task force arrangement here locally that

we're working with our partners. but in baltimore, we became very concerned about why this raise in heroin overdoses. we understand why there's more heroin coming into our country. and that's because more and more of it is coming -- almost all western hemisphere. but more and more of it is coming from mexico and is being controlled by the same mexican organizations and trafficking groups that we see all across the country who have brought cocaine, midwest and marijuana to our communities. so we started looking at it and started -- >> remember, i have five minutes. so could we get -- >> we started to be concerned because there was an epidemic of fentanyl-laced heroin a few years back. we started working with medical examiners, coroners and county police departments and looking at those deaths and finding a number of them are actually

fentanyl-laced heroin overdoses. so we have efforts going enforcement-wise, public service announcements, warning local law enforcement. >> so how many of these task forces do you have doing this great work in the baltimore community? >> i know the washington hida is working this. >> no, no, no. i'm asking dea, the baltimore efforts i compliment you on. okay. i'm frustrated the doj did not do the comprehensive thing. you can't only fight the -- law enforcement is a tool. we have to look at prevention, enforcement and interdiction and then recovery. okay? >> yes. >> that's not going on. >> you are doing a great effort. do you have seven of these? 17 of these efforts? how many do you have?

>> we have the main effort in baltimore, but we also have a couple different task forces operating and coordinating together here in washington, d.c., and then we have communities throughout the country, where we have replicated what baltimore did. the results of what we've done when we've been able to get health folks together, law enforcement -- >> okay. i'm gonna ask you. what are you doing on drugs, director comey? >> in every field office, we are engaged in focusing on the complex trafficking organizations, almost all the time in partnership with dea. our contribution to the heroin epidemic has been to work with dea to try and disrupt the traffickers who are bringing it in. we have not touched the other pieces you've talked about. >> does the marshal service have a role? >> ma'am, our role is primarily dedicated to the regional task forces and district task forces on the apprehension of the fugitives involved and we work

collectively with our colleagues on state and local levels in apprehending drug fugitives. >> mr. jones? >> we look for the worse of the worse on firearms and protecting either their organization or business. the guns are always the driver for us, but that obviously leads us to some collaboration with dea and fbi and state and locals across the board. >> well, my time is up, but i think it says, we really need a different kind of coordination here. and, first, i want to compliment everybody on what they're doing. it's not a criticism of you, and the fact also of working with the state and local governments. we had the methodology of task forces. there needs to be, i think, a more organized effort. if we have a second round, i'll follow up with other questions. i appreciate what you're doing. i gained a great deal of insight here. thank you. >> senator langford.

>> thank you. i would like to follow up on what senator mikulski was just talking about. is there a clear layout of the lanes of responsibilities when you deal with drug issues? in two areas i can see clearly dealing with gangs and drugs, and obviously, there's a tremendous amount of overlap, all four of you have lanes of responsibility in those areas. does it exist that there is a clear layout of who has what lane? >> i believe that there are very clear lines. for instance, atf and fbi, they're violent crime task forces. and our role at dea is really to identify those trafficking organizations, especially mexican cartels, major mexican organizations that are supplying the gangs and that's what's fueling violence on our streets. so we work together in a

collaborative way all knowing what our lanes are. and i have been very proud to say in the 12 years that i've been in washington, we've not once ran into a problem that i had to go to the fbi director and say we were overlapping here. i've not had to go to the director of atf. we work very well together and know what our lanes are. >> with that, and i would like to have that document, just to be able to see so we can get clarity of who has what lane, if it's a task force or whatever that may be. i'd like to be able to have that so we can get the clear differentiation. but part of the issue for us as well as we deal with a bunch of issues, we appreciate very much what you do and the folks that are on the street and individuals that literally lay down their life for our country and do that every day and deal with the grief and our nation grieves. we want to have the maximum

number of people that are actually engaged on the street both protecting each other and our nation, the least amount of administrative work. so where there are areas of overlap and one entity is related to the area, we'd rather have one on the street and half the administrative cost as possible. so, that would help us to be able to get that perspective. i know there's a lot of focus right now on national terrorism, rightfully so, by the way, but we can't lose the focus on drug and gang violence that's happening in the united states because we lose more folks to drug and gang violence every week in the united states than we do to national terrorism. we can't put one priority over another one. we just can't lose that priority. and i would continue to reenforce that with the funds and focus we have, that's a continued, major emphasis we have to keep up and the dea's trying to lead the way, but all four of your agencies are very involved in that as well. i do have a specific question. mr. jones here as well.

attorney general eric holder and i had a conversation several years ago coming out of fast and furious, and it was a conversation about some of the procedures and process and trying to align the fbi processes for how they do undercover operations and the permissions and access points going all the way to d.c. because there's two different sets of processes. it was about three years ago, we had that conversation. it was ongoing. do you know where that is in trying to align atf processes with more on fbi-like process for investigations? >> senator thank you for the question and i think we are in a very good place from were i was when i came on three years ago. >> i had three priorities when i came on board. one was to get the organization healthy. not just in resources, the infamous morale question. number two was to fully integrate atf into the department of justice policies. having served on the agac, being intimately familiar with undercover review committees, ci committee, all of the process that are there at the department of justice, we are on target

with integrating and making sure that we are all in sync with all of the doj law enforcement components on how we do some of those fundamentals in terms of processes for higher or high-risk law enforcement operations. now, the challenge for all of us, and the thing that gets attention oftentimes is when the policy is not put into practice completely and uniformly across the country and that's -- that's sometimes a challenge, because putting it into practice involves people and communication and training. >> what do you think that is in implementation of the policy though first? >> for us? >> yes. >> we are in sync with doj policy across the board and will continue to refine all of our orders and policies and practices on paper and in practice.

>> okay. thank you. there's a decrease in budget on the prisoner detention budget line on that and the reason there was a decline in population. can you tell me the reason you've seen there's a decline in federal prison population? >> you're accurate, senator, is that the major contributor is the decline in the population. it's also a lot of efficiency and time in detention that's been reduced in business practices. >> any certain population there's a decline in length of detention? >> the decline in population while stays strong in immigration, stays at a steady pace, there's a slight decline in drugs and a slight decline in supervised release. but those fluctuate, primarily because of the length of time it takes to prosecute the cases. so it's time in detention that really impacts the dollar at times. so immigration is a faster processing of those cases compared to drugs. it's really the time factor that

reduces it. >> thank you. i yield back. >> senator feinstein. >> thanks very much, mr. chairman. director comey, i want to thank you for the work your people do in counterterrorism. i was there when bob mueller announced the development of an intelligence branch within the fbi, and at that time, i had some concerns about it. and i've watched its evolution. whether it was zazi, which is well know, or plots that are not well known, the fbi has been able to disrupt plots in the united states and i think that's a very important and significant thing and i want very much to thank you for it. i want to ask you yes or no. one of my disappointments was to learn that the six-year report of the committee on detention and interrogation program sat in

a locker and no one looked at it. and let me tell you why i'm disappointed. the report, the 6,000 pages and the 38,000 footnotes, which has been compiled, contains numerous examples of a learning experience of cases of interrogation, of where the department could learn perhaps some new things from past mistakes. and the fact that it hasn't been opened, at least that's what's been reported to me, is really a great disservice. it's classified. it's meant for the appropriate department. you're one of them. i'd like to ask if you open that report and designate certain people to read it and maybe even have a discussion how things might be improved by suggestions in the report.

>> i will do that, senator. as you know, i have read the executive summary. you asked me to do it during my confirmation hearing. i kept my promise and read it. there is a small number of people at the fbi who have read it, but what we have not done, have we thought about whether there are lessons learned for us? there's a tendency for me to think we don't engage in interrogation like that, so what's there to learn. >> you did. and bob mueller pulled your people out, which is a great tribute to him. >> so, the answer is yes. i will think about it better. and i will figure out where we are in terms of looking at the entire thing. i don't know enough about where the document sits at this point this time. you mentioned a lockbox. i don't know that well enough to comment at this point. >> thank you very much. let me talk to you about another problem. human trafficking is now the second largest criminal enterprise in the world. it's behind only the drug trade. and in this country, too, children 12, 13, 14 are being trafficked. they're being transported across

state lines to cities all over the united states. in some areas, like los angeles, even street gangs are running these trafficking rings. so, traffickers now to distance themselves, have come upon a method of using the internet. and there are some 20 internet sites where a purveyor, a trafficker, for as little as a dollar, can buy an ad. and so the internet effectively becomes complicit. these are children. underage girls. sometimes, boys. they're held against their will. i've become very concerned about this and will be doing more on it. but my question to you is what kind of -- what can the fbi do to really make this a major prio