captioning performed by vitac >> going to be talking at state level as former state administrator, states play a crucial role. there are many, many programs out there that don't receive federal funding or drug courts that don't receive federal funding. we hope our policies and procedures are adopted by those nonfederally funded programs, but states play a key role in licensing treatment programs. >> thank you. >> and they i think can look at the opportunities of increasing or ensuring that state license of treatment programs also have the same kind of language. >> thank you. speaking of states, the

gentleman from west virginia. mr. mckinley, for five minutes. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman, and thank you for the hearings on this topic. as an engineer, i need to see things in perspective. so been following this the last four years in congress and on this committee, trying to look at this issue. i think one of the last meetings we just had, i tried to put it in perspective by saying -- you said there were 44,000 overdose deaths. i want people to understand, that's more than died in vietnam in combat. i don't know that the american public understands that, and every day on the news, nbc or whatever, they had body counts and had that and people were outraged over that. i am not getting the sense of outrage over every year we are lose as many people to drug

overdose as we did a ten year war in vietnam. i am concerned when i had affirmed in west virginia one in five babies born in west virginia and may be 1 in 4 in other states, but 1 in 5 have been affected with drugs. i keep things in perspective saying in europe, overdose rate is approximately 21 per million. in america, it is 7 to 10 times that amount. i get on the verge of outrage, father of four, grandfather of six. these are what we are giving our kids, this is what the future is. i hear this testimony from this panel of seven and seven before that and seven before that. quite frankly, i get confused. i don't know what the priority is. for the business community and you all here in washington,

everyone loves to plan. but they don't carry out. that may be insulting, and i don't mean it in insulting fashion, but we have 44,000 more people that will die between now and next year. because we don't have a prior -- i would like to think we could come up with one way, at least one, prioritize it, what's one thing, and then put everything we have into it. that manhattan project, go after that one solution and see if that doesn't start the ball rolling in the right way. then we can do two, three, four with it. but a focus. i don't see a focus. i didn't see a focus from you. i heard seven or eight ways we might be able to approach this problem because the plan, everyone loves the plan but implementation falls short. so since you're meeting on a regular basis, couldn't you come up with one idea to where we ought to begin?

the metrics, the optics, we can dig into that and then we can have plan b, c and d, but let's achieve one instead of continuing to meltdown like this. i don't want to see another statistic of 44,000 more people died of overdose. i hesitate to ask, can you come up with an idea today in the time frame? is there one, just one idea we should focus on? what's the best way? is that in the drug use, is that in real time, on purchasing prescription drugs, that it is a national database? is that the number one thing we should do? my god, the federal government just changed sentencing guidelines for heroin. if you're caught with 50 hits of heroin, you get probation. what are we doing? are we fighting heroin or not? i am really frustrated with this.

give me more guidance on plan one. >> i appreciate your attention to this and you know, myself and many of our colleagues have been doing this work a long time, i think are filled with a sense of tragedy in terms of where we are and know that we can do better and work with congress. you asked for one. i think there are three areas in the secretary's plan that we have to do. we have to change prescribing patterns, we are prescribing way too much medication. and that's starting the trajectory. we need to increase capacity to treat the disease so people that go down that path have adequate access. the third, that we need to focus on reducing overdose deaths. those are three areas we can work with congress on to look at how do we increase our efforts. >> let me add onto that. seems that people from west virginia think alike that way and our secretary who is --

shares the same experience you do pushed us to focus and take action in those three areas. you know, with it this year, we more than quadrupled funding in those areas and we're going to triple that again if our plan goes through and these are in those three focused area because that's where the evidence says we should be doubling down. that's what is guiding us. >> thank you. is the secretary asking for legislation on this then to facilitate the answer to that question? >> there are some legislative proposals and some of it is just increasing some of the use of discretionary funds and we got some additional appropriations this year, and then in the president's budget we have some legislative proposals. >> let the committee know if there's any language to address that question. miss clark from new york, you're recognized five minutes.

>> thank you very much, mr. chairman, and ranking member. thank you to all of our witnesses for giving the committee the benefit of your expertise and experience. i would like to focus on the prevention side of the equation, how do we prevent opioid addiction in the first place. dr. volkow, picking up on a point made just a moment ago about way too many prescriptions, this is to you. why are so many prescriptions being written for opioids? are physicians not getting the appropriate level of training and education in pain management? responsible opioid prescribing practices? what would you say? >> they're both. actually what happened is we have to recognize that there's another epidemic of chronic pain in our country, estimated 100 million people according to the institute of medicine. as a result of pressure of need to address this problem, the

joint accreditation requires that hospitals and physicians in hospitals ask questions about pain and treat them. this was in 2000. the problem was that that was not associated with the education required in order to be able to properly screen pain, but also to manage it. and to manage it and use opioid medications adequately. there was a big gap between need to implement better treatment for pain, but inadequate education of that system. so that's a major problem. in terms of prevention, we have to recognize two aspects on this epidemic different from the others. one, we have individual start diverting and get medication, they want to get high. then there's the other element as important of individuals that are properly prescribed the medication because they have pain. in the past, it was believed you got an opioid and had pain, you will never become addicted. data shows that's not correct.

we don't know exactly what percentage of individuals will be treated for the pain will become addicted. the range goes enormously from no one to something like 40, 60. we have no idea. that's why i highlighted the notion of if we need to be very aggressive in education of health care providers on screening and management of pain but also be very aggressive on treatment of health care providers for recognition of substance abuse disorder to determine who is vulnerable. when a person is properly treated is transitioning and how to intervene. >> thank you very much. director botticelli does omdcp believe that the federal government should mandate continuing medical education on responsible opioid prescribing practices as a precondition of dea registration to prescribe controlled substances? can you elaborate on how that would work if that's the case? >> sure.

we support mandatory prescriber education for all of the evidence that you heard today, it is clear that if we want to prevent prescription drug misuse, heroin use and overdose, we need to stop prescribing these medications so liberally. there was a recent gao report that showed physicians get little to no pain prescribing, veterinarians get more pain prescribing than physicians in the united states. so we don't think it is overly burdensome to require physicians in this epidemic to have education. i think if you talked about it, we would have to work with legislature to look at changes to controlled substances act to ensure that a certified continuing medical education program would be linked to the dea licensure or relicensure process and that we would monitor both -- oversee those courses we believe have core competencies we think are important and monitor who takes those.

>> very well. thank you very much. dr. throckmorton, manufacturers of opioid pain relievers are currently required to offer free voluntary education to physicians or responsible opioid prescribing practices. however, as i understand it physician participation rates for the voluntary education courses are fairly low. is that correct? >> we do have those programs in place. they were put into place about 18 months ago and so the initial year was spent putting into place a process to allow the education to be available, prescribers to make use of it. during that time we saw about 20,000 prescribers that are using extended release, long acting opioids sign up for one course. 20,000 out of 320,000 prescribers that prescribe the medicines is not a large fraction. it is progress. we hope in the second year that

ends july this year, we will see a larger increase in terms of uptake and use of this education. we have been working with the continuing education community to make better use of it, make it more available. we are optimistic. we hope we will see more use. it is one of two pillars of education from our perspective, combined with mandatory education that he just spoke about, we believe both of these provide important opportunities to educate prescribers. >> very well. i yield back. thank you very much. >> thank you. miss brooks of indiana, five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, for continuing the focus on this critical subject for our country. i want to start with you, dr. volkow. we talked about how the opioid addiction facing the country is in large part due to chronic pain. you mentioned 100 million people suffer from chronic pain. one in i heard up to one in three americans possibly suffer from chronic pain. one of the goals of this hearing is to focus on evidence based

treatment and new treatments, try to find out what is working and obviously one treatment doesn't work for everyone as we heard. but there is, i learned about in the course of examining this, that there are technologies that are new, not completely new, one being -- i was told about spinal cord stimulation which targets nerves with electrical impulses rather than drugs. clinical studies shown it to be safe, 4,000 patients received the stimulator, so it obviously is a device, a technology that can actually stop that stimulation, it can help hopefully end that addiction, yet nih hasn't included it in the draft pain strategy, didn't mention technologies like scs. can you talk at all about why it wouldn't be promoting this fda approved type of technology and

are there other technologies we ought to be talking about other than medication for chronic pain? >> thanks for the question. indeed, this is an area that is rapidly evolving, and if it is not mentioned it is because many of the findings are too recent. the one that you're commenting in terms of stimulation is one of the strategies we are promoting research, and the same strategy can be utilized to be able to actually inhibit the emotional centers of the brain that react to pain. so researchers are utilizing a wide variety of tools and technologies that have a goal of the initiative to understand the brain, that again highlights, but brings up something that i think that is facing us in this epidemic, the need that we have to develop better strategies for the management of chronic pain because the physicians are forced, patients in great

suffering, they don't know what to do and give an opioid, even though the evidence does not show us that they're very effective for the management of chronic pain but there are not many out there. so recognizing this is an area where we require to invest resources to have alternatives for patients suffering with chronic pain is an important part of the initiative of addressing. >> how would you recommend we increase patient access and educate more physicians about this type of technology? >> well, this is new technology, some of them, actually the evidence is just emerging. it will have to be submitted to the fda for approval, then physicians as part of training should be exposed to them. i would say just highlighting in the notion because michael botticelli clearly delineated it is important medical students as part of the basic training have understanding of these technologies because pain is part of every medical condition

almost of every medical condition. >> thank you very much. i would like to ask you, my state, state of indiana, recently passed a law allowing physicians to prescribe the naloxone to parents and others and friends giving them greater access to the reversal heroin drug. would you speak as to what's known about the impact of those programs and whether you have concerns about whether naloxone might encourage more risk taking because i met with law enforcement who said they had given people naloxone, saved their lives, and a couple weeks later saved their life again with naloxone. and so i am somewhat concerned. i want to absolutely save lives and we must, but yet -- and we know there aren't enough treatments, this is a huge problem, but might that encourage an addict if they knew their mom, dad or friend had the save right there, can you talk

to us about these naloxone programs? >> so to the first question obviously naloxone distribution by people who have the potential to win this and overdose, law enforcement in counties play a key role in that effort. i will tell you by way of when i was in massachusetts, we significantly increased access to naloxone and did a peer reviewed study that showed when you introduced naloxone into a community, overdose rates go down. and the more naloxone you introduce, the better the scale effect. one of the pieces we are concerned about but no evidence to show that naloxone distribution increases drug use, some of the issues that you mentioned become critically important that overdoses are often seen as a significant motivator for people to seek

care, but having treatment on demand is a particular issue. treatment on demand, particularly in rural communities, is particularly an issue. interventions at emergency departments to get people into care are critically important. while we know addiction is a chronic disease, and some people continue to use when you have adverse events, but we also need a comprehensive response. not just saving someone's life. >> i agree. i hope the results in indiana prove to be the same as in your state. i yield back. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. before i get to some questions, i have a follow-up question for miss hyde. last time that you were in front of this committee which i really appreciate you coming back we discussed your websites and if they were an effective use of taxpayer dollars.

at that time you stated that you were in the process of evaluating that. have you finished that process yet? >> that process continues. thank you for asking the follow-up question. the process continues. i think the website that you indicated most concerns about was one of the websites we were in the process of reviewing. it was originally developed based on data and knowledge from nida. >> that was for the three to six-year-olds for suicide prevention. have you finished that one yet? >> yes, building blocks i think is the one you were concerned about. >> right. >> we have worked with our colleagues at nida and determined the website hadn't been updated, needed to be updated, and we are in the process of updating that. >> could you give me progress reports so i can know where you are at? we want to be sure taxpayer dollars are being used in an effective way. >> certainly.

>> to get to questions, simple yes or no, does the fda recommend methadone be used as first line of therapy for chronic pain? >> methadone is approved for use for pain, yes. >> but specifically speaking to the first line, for first line of defense basically? >> it is one of the medications that we have approved for pain. if you look at methadone, the labeling for methadone, it calls it out as far as a product that has particular characteristics that make it challenging to use for pain. >> that would be a no for the first line. >> our recommendation is prescribers think carefully before using methadone. there are things that make it a challenging product to use. it is approved for use in that setting but i hope doctors think carefully before they do it. >> well, the fda put out a warning about the drug safety and basically said that you guys, that insurers should not,

should not be referred as preferred therapy, unless special instructions in education was put onto it. so i would take that as the fda would by this statement, it would be a no, that you wouldn't recommend it unless there's a lot of consideration taken? >> personally what i just said is where i would be. i would need to look at the statement and get back with you about specifics of it. it is a drug that has a long half life, that's variable patient to patient. has unique cardiac toxicity. there are other drugs useful for pain that don't have those characteristics. >> all i am looking for is yes or no. i am trying to get to another further down the line of questions. i appreciate you being here. i like the last name, my sister's last name. >> good last name. >> i have three beautiful nieces. the spelling is usually messed up. doctor, what about the cdc? do you guys consider this

methadone as being first line of defense for pain? >> at cdc we focus on primary prevention, not as much as care. i would defer to sister agencies on that. >> which would be. >> the panelists here, fda. >> dr. throckmorton gave his personal opinion. the statement of fda you heard about. would you follow the statement i am assuming? >> i would follow his statement. i don't have a personal opinion on methadone for pain. it is not something i did in my prior practice. >> dr. conway, by the way, i am always jealous when people have their family with them. i have five wonderful kids. if you ever want to see me cry, that's about the only thing will make me cry, i miss them. >> how are your kids doing? >> thanks, i appreciate that. >> i'll take a deep breath, wipe the tear away. are you aware that methadone accounts for 30% of overdose

deaths while only accounting for 2% of prescriptions prescribed for chronic pain? >> i am aware it is a higher percentage of deaths compared to prescriptions because of the long half life and risks described. >> would you personally recommend it as a first line of defense for pain? >> i am a practicing physician, i do not as a practicing physician typically use methadone as first defense. however, i think it depends on the individual patient characteristics and would defer to the physician's judgment with that individual patient. >> according to the pew research, they put out a deal that said methadone is available in low cost generic form, considered preferred drug in many states by their medicaid programs, despite fda warnings about the drug safety and statements by american academy of pain medicine that insurers should not be referred this therapy unless specially

educated and provided to the individual. i just kind of wonder if overall i would think we're considering it not being there, why is this still listed as a first line with medicaid when we are seeing so many deaths. it almost makes you think is the cost of a life not more valuable than the cost of a low drug? >> i would make a few points. statutorily, medicaid programs have the ability to set their preferred drug list. however, we have taken a couple of actions to try to address this issue. one, working with samhsa and others on the panel, put an informational bulletin to medicaid programs talking about this issue and complete array of pain both on the medication side, risks of methadone and the other options and importantly as others have said, the importance of behavioral treatment and medication treatment. i also call out that our medicaid innovation accelerator

program, the first area we are working on is substance abuse disorders. we have over 30 states involved and they're taking a comprehensive approach to the medicaid program to appropriate substance abuse treatment, including appropriate use of medications and other therapies. >> appreciate it. mr. chairman, i yield back. >> a follow-up question and i do too. >> one of the questions or statistics i was giving in talking about perspective is the model or the situation that they're facing in europe. the average is 21 per million. i was just looking. that's the average? italy, italy is below that. latvia netherlands, belgium,

greece, france poland bulgaria, the czech republic slovakia hungary, turkey, romania, all have less than that. significantly less. what are they doing right, what are they doing differently in europe than we are in america? are we learning anything from them? >> there's something we are doing very differently. you pick up exactly on the point. if you look at united states from some of the medications we may be consuming 95% of total production in the world. the question is are we a nation that is so much in pain that we require these massive amounts of opioid medications or is there something that we are doing in terms of their access to them that it is inadequate. i want again to reiterate the notion that yes, we are overprescribing opioid medications on the one hand, but at the same time, not exclusionary, sometimes we are undertreating patients with pain. so we are in a situation that we have it bad in both ways.

we overprescribe making these drugs available which then can be easily diverted and prescribing to those that deent don't need them can also result in adverse consequences. you don't see that level of prescriptions in none of the european countries. so what's the -- why not? what are they doing? are their doctors more sensitive to this issue than doctors in america? are they concerned about trial lawyers? what's the difference between it? if there are ten to 15 times more people dieing in america than there are in europe, something's wrong. they're doing something differently. i would like to know what it is. >> and that's exactly the way i said, we have to aggressively institute education of the health care providers on proper screening and management of pain. that's a crucial component while

also educating them about the adverse effects as relates to substance disorders. and need to face the fact that we need to also provide with alternative treatments for the management of chronic pain that are effective. >> thank you very much. i yield back. >> miss collins, you have a quick question. miss brooks. sorry. where am i going? >> thank you. this is actually -- i realize mr. bottomicelli mentioned in his opening, i wanted to have an unrelated follow-up, if i might, mr. chairman. you mentioned we are having a crisis in indiana with respect in scott county, a community of 4,300 people, an outbreak of hiv due to needle exchange, and i would simply like and i hope many of you have been following what has been happening and the number of citizens in indiana

who now have contracted hiv because of their in all likelihood, heroin addiction, right? or prescription drug addiction, and possibly heroin addiction as well. i am very curious since i have this incredible panel of experts here what you might say to our state and to the health professionals who are dealing with this crisis to our state and local government officials, what advice and thoughts do you have for our state. truly, if we could, this is a crisis in our state that could be in any state in the country. mr. botticelli and anyone else who might comment, please. >> so first of all just about staff from all of the agencies on this table coordinate on a daily basis in tight coordination with indiana health department to make sure we're giving scott county the

resources to do that. >> i am sure dr. adams appreciates that. >> you're right. i think we are over 145 cases of hiv. one of the consequences nationally is increases in viral hepatitis as it relates to sharing needles. and i think it also points to some issues that we need to include about access to treatment services. what's happening in indiana and scott county is emblematic of potential we could see in other parts of the country, but point to some issues we have been talking about today in terms of making sure that people have access to good care, both infectious disease and substance abuse. they have adequate access to clean syringes so they're not increasing infection in this most poignant case of what we need. and that they're having timely access to treatment services i think are all areas to do that. we will continue to engage with folks in scott county to make sure that whatever we can do on the federal side can help alleviate the situation.

>> i would like to add to that i am proud of all the efforts cdc is doing on the ground in indiana in conjunction with agencies here. i agree completely with the director botticelli -- >> watch all of this hearing online at c-span.org. we're leaving this to take you live to another senate hearing, this one focusing on terrorist groups recruiting efforts including the use of social media. it is the senate homeland security committee.

this hearing is called to order. i'm looking at the title of the hearing, jihad 2.0. i think -- i think that's a wrong title. it is really the current evolution of terrorist recruitment. we have got a panel of i think excellent witnesses to lay out the reality, which is what we're always trying to do in this committee, which is if you solve a problem, you have to first recognize and acknowledge that reality. so i think we have got a good panel. i would ask consent to enter my written opening statement to the record. it is always granted because our ranking member is such a kind gentleman. what i would like to do is talk a little bit about a isis message that warns of 71 trained soldiers in 15 u.s. states 23 signed up for missions. i'm going to read some excerpts here because, let me say, we have no knowledge whether this is true or not.

i think some of our witnesses will probably say it is bluster. let's hope so. but this is a perfect example of what isis is trying to do and how they're trying to use social media. their post, and of course, this is claiming credit for the terrorist attacks in texas, excerpts read, the attack bit islamic state in america is only the beginning of our efforts to establish a province in the heart of our enemy. we knew that the target was protected. our intention was to show how easy we give our lives for the sake of allah. out of the 71 training soldiers 23 signed up for missions like sunday. we are increasing in number. of the 15 states, five we will name. virginia maryland, illinois, california, michigan. the disbelievers who shot our brothers think you killed someone untrained. they gave their bodyies in plain view because we were watching. they say the next six months will be interesting. let's hope not.

as i'm being briefed for this hearing, by the way, the reason we always call these hearings is i got questions. i need to understand what these problems are. but so i'm always learning a lot and i'll learn a lot more through the testimony, but i like timelines. and so i had my staff prepare just for 2015 the timeline of potential terrorist plots that have been foiled the arrests we have been made by individuals inspired by isis and other islamic terrorists. and you go through the list. we had christopher lee from cincinnati, ohio, planning to come to the u.s. capitol to bomb. and then two semi-automatic weapons opened fire on people fleeing the capitol. that was on january 14th. february 25th, three brooklyn men were arrest. march 17th, former u.s. air for the veteran arrested after a failed attempt to cross the border into syria. march 25th, an army national guard specialist was arrested after planning to travel to syria. april 2nd, two women were

arrested in queens, new york. april 3rd, a philadelphia woman was arrested before she could travel to syria. april 8th, this one hits closer to home this is a gentleman from -- a man from madison joshua ray van was arrested in chicago o'hare airport after his flight landed from turkey. april 10th, john t. booker's arrest after discovered he was preparing a car bomb for use against nearby ft. riley army post. april 16th, another indictment. april 19th, six men arrested on terrorism charges. april 3rd, the texas terrorist attempt. we have got a chart that i think is also somewhat surprising. again, the point of that timeline is these arrests the revelations of these things are growing and they're increasing in frequency. another -- i thought relatively shocking as i was being briefed by my staff, i was saying is this true?

the number of terrorist attacks in 2012 around the world was 6,771? and in 2013, 9,700? and one of my staff members went wow. which is exactly my reaction. 2012, 11 individuals killed in terrorist attacks, grew by 61% to almost 18,000 in 2013. in this chart we have broken that out between terrorist attacks in afghanistan syria, iraq and pakistan. i consider those war zones. that still leaves almost 3,000 terrorist attacks in 2012 outside of those war zones. almost 4,000 in 2013 an increase of 33.8%. so the point of this hearing is to show that the danger is real. in many respects the threat is growing. we'll have testimony here there have been some setbacks for isis. they're maybe not as strong as they purport to be. but they're using social media

to show that they're actually stronger than they are to inspire the kind of action and they don't need a whole lot of territory. they don't need too many computers. they don't need too many people spewing that hate and providing that kind of inspiration. so this is a real threat. i really want to thank and welcome the witnesses for your thoughtful testimony in coming here and with that i'll turn it over to the ranking member for his opening comments. >> thank you, mr. chairman. to each of you, welcome. this is an excellent panel and we look forward to hearing from you, having a chance to ask questions of you this morning. as this committee discussed a number of hearings over the years, the threats that our country faces and the chairman just has given us a quick look of what is going on this year, but the nature of the threat evolved significantly since 9/11 when i was a new member of the committee. after 9/11, the most acute terrorist threats came from osama bin laden's al qaeda

which orchestrated as we know large complex attacks from remote caves in afghanistan. today, bin laden is dead. the core of al qaeda as we knew it had been largely dismantled. unfortunately al qaeda affiliates in yemen and africa and in syria have filled the void. at the same time, new terror groups like isis presented in the media a different kind of threat to the u.s. and others both here and abroad. while the threat of major aviation attacks still remains a top concern for american counterterrorism officials the tactics employed by groups who are targeted have broadened and are not as focused on this particular kind of attack method. groups like isis, like al shabab and al qaeda in the arabian peninsula used social media and online propaganda to spread their call to extremists here and america and around the world to carry out their own attacks

against us -- perfected the ability to use social media to lure western recruits to syria for training. these new tactics mean we can no longer rely solely on our ability to use military force to eliminate a terrorist threat. we must in partnership with our allies abroad start examining more closely the root causes of why westerners join the ranks and act in the name of isis or al qaeda. we must continue to evolve our own counterterrorism tactics to address these root causes, and today we'll begin to examine the narratives put forward by the terrorist groups over social media and also how those narratives are being used to influence vulnerable individuals here and in other western countries. and we will look for common sense solutions that our government, along with other governments, can employ to counter these groups. with that, i look forward to a

good conversation. thank you, again for joining us. >> thank you, senator carper. it is the tradition of this committee to swear in witnesses. so if you all stand, raise your right hand. do you swear the testimony you give before this committee will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god? thank you. please be seated. our first witness is peter bergen, mr. bergen is the director of the national security studies program at the new american foundation. cnn's national security analyst and the author of "manhunt:the ten year search for bin laden." mr. bergen. >> thank you, senator johnson. thank you, senator carper. thank you, other members of the committee and the excellent staff that put this hearing together. my chance today is to try to outline the threat from americans inspired by the syrian conflict which is the newest wave and cohort of domestic jihadism in the united states.

and we at the new america foundation where i work have identified 62 individuals from news reports or public records who have tried to join isis, joined isis or for the al qaeda affiliate or supported others doing so. here are the big takeaways. they come from across the united states. we found cases in 19 states. as you know, fbi director james coomy said there are ongoing investigations. they don't fit any ethnic profile, there are whites, pakistani americans, bosnian americans, and this, of course produces problems for law enforcement in the sense that unlike in the case of al shabab which attracted overwhelmingly somali americans, mostly from minnesota -- johnson went to university, i believe, that was a very focused group of -- who were going. this is across the united states. we also found an unprecedented number of american females. typically these are a group of

highly misogynistic individuals whose goal in life is to preclude women from having any role outside of the home. we found some females, a number of them are teenagers, and this is really a new -- a very new phenomenon. we also found that this is a relatively young group. the average age is 25. but teenage girls as young as 15. the only profile that these -- this group really shows, 53 of the 62 individuals were very active on social media. downloading and showing jihadist propaganda and in some cases as simpson was doing directly communicating with members of isis in syria. and, you know this is a new development in the way jihadist terrorists are recruiting in the united states. the kind of conventional view or perhaps the cartoonish view is an al qaeda recruiter comes here and recruits somebody and creates a cell. in fact, that's very rare. that did happen in lackawanna. you may remember the lackawanna

six case where there was an al qaeda recruiter who recruited six yemeni americans from buffalo to new york to go to a training camp in afghanistan. we also saw that also in minnesota, in 2007, when veterans of the somali war went to minneapolis to recruit americans physically and bring them to somalia. but that is -- we're no longer seeing that model at all. of the 62 individuals, we found none of them were physically recruited by a militant operative, cleric, returning foreign fighter or radicalized while in prison. they self-recruited online or were sometimes in touch by twitter with members of isis in syria. why would americans abandon what is after all a usually very comfortable life, a lot of these come from, you know come from comfortable backgrounds and are intelligent individuals. why would they be attracted to isis? and i think there are sort of perhaps three reasons. first of all of course, a terrible nature of assad's brutal war against his own people is an attraction.

secondly, the claim that isis created the caliphate, which i think is a powerful attraction for idealistic fundamentalist muslims. thirdly, isis is presenting itself as the vanguard of the muslim army that is signaling the end of times and that it is basically the vanguard of a group that will usher in, you know, the perfect true islam when the savior of islam returns. now, you know i was just this morning looking up the -- saw a very large number of americans, something like 4 in 10, believe that we are in the end times. so this is not such an uncommon view that we're in the end times. so isis is presenting itself as ushering in the end times, which is another powerful kind of attraction. it also presents itself as a real state with social services and that claim is not completely false. although it certainly is probably less true than they present it. an for some of the western recruits, this is heroic and

glamorous thing. we have seen people tweet on isis -- we have seen isis fighters say it is like playing the call of duty, but in 3-d. there is a heroic aspect of this. what is the true level of threat? the true level of threat in the west is not as much as something like 80% of americans believe that isis is a serious or fairly serious threat to the united states. well, it may be a threat, it is clearly a big threat to american interests in the middle east, potentially. but so far only one syrian foreign fighter carried out a successful attack in the west which was the frenchman who attacked the jewish museum in brussels on may 24th, 2014 killing four people. that doesn't mean the threat doesn't exist. it is worrisome but not existential. and related to that point of the 19 individuals we found who went to syria or eight of them were killed over there, so syria was proving as much of a

graveyard as a launchpad for attacks. it is a very dangerous war as you know. in fact, about half of the men who have gone over there have been killed in a larger sample of 600 foreign fighters that we examined and 5% of the females. evenly for the women it is very dangerous. so if the returning foreign fighters are not the issue what is the issue? and the issue is really what we saw on sunday, which is people inspired by isis taking up -- on obviously easy to take up weapons in this country and doing something with them. sunday's attack didn't mature in the way the attackers wanted to. i think that is a harbinger of what we'll see in the future. so the real issue is not syrian foreign fighters coming back to the united states. law enforcement has done a good job of tracking these folks. they come back there is only one case where law enforcement didn't recognize that a particular person had gone to syria, which is the floridian.

but the returning problem is really i think much less of an issue than the home grown isis inspired that we saw on sunday. and there is very little as a practical matter we can prevent lone wolfs who are truly lone wolves from doing these kinds after tacks. the good news is there is a natural cerealing to ing toceiling to what a lone wolf can do. in boston the tsarnaev brothers were lone wolves. it was a tragedy, but it wasn't a national catastrophe like 9/11 was. we have to frame the threat effectively which is it is worrisome, but not existential and nothing on the scale of 9/11. >> our next witness is j.m. berger. mr. berger is the nonresident fellow in the project on u.s. relations with the islamic world of the brookings institute. and the author of "jihad joe, americans who go to war in the name of islam and isis, the

state of terror." mr. berger. >> thank you for having me. i think that i would like to start by talking about the lone wolf threat because that's on everyone's mind after the events of this weekend. isis is in many ways appears to be the first jihadist group to kind of crack the lone wolf formula. the idea of leaderless resistance and attack goes back to the 1980s, the white supremacist movement. and people had been trying to make it work ever since. and the problem with lone wolves is that it is too easy to stay at home, generally. people are not going to get adequately motivated to carry out an attack without having social reinforcement and that defeats the purpose of being a lone wolf to escape detection by not talking to anyone. isis has mixed up this formula and they -- there are a couple of reasons for this. the first thing that they have done is they have become a

populous movement. and they're pretty undiscriminating about who they include in their group relative to al qaeda. it was very difficult to join al qaeda. al qaeda was a vanguard and an elitist movement. so that affords them access to more people. secondly, their propaganda is extremely violent. and it is also very focused on presenting the group as dynamic, and action oriented, relative again, you look at comparison to al qaeda, al qaeda's propaganda in recent years especially tends more towards discourse, we're trying to convince people we have the right idea, that we reasonable people would agree with us that this is the correct thing to do. and isis doesn't care about that so much. they're willing to just get people agitated and cut them loose. the third element of change is

that isis has changed sort of fundamental underlying assumption that we see in the jihadist argument. al qaeda preceded from an assumption of weakness. its argument was of weakness. its argument was based on the proposition that muslims are weak and that they are unable to stand up to ap pos state regimes in the region. the reason they couldn't stand up to them is because the west was behind them. the idea behind al qaeda and using terrorism as a tactic was that this is the tool of the weak. we have to degrade popular support in the united states for ap pos tate regimes in the middle east and the united states will withdraw its support and then we'll be able to fight these guys directly. isis has skipped ahead to fighting these guys directly. they're taking the fight to the

local regimes. their message is they're winners and you should join us because we're strong. all of this is part of a very complex set of problems. we're in a period of very broad social change. people have been talking about social media for a number of years and often in very obfusive terms about how it's changing the world. this is the first manifestation of how that really is going to work. what we're seeing is social media allows people to self-select the beliefs and information that they receive. if you have an interest in jihadism, you can find other people interested in that very easily, very quickly and you can establish relationships with them. this is very different from, say, the 1950s. if you are a radical jihadist in the 1950s living in peoria, you might be go your whole life before you meet somebody who

shares your views. today it takes ten minutes to find someone who has your views. today it provides a social context. it's reinforcement, personal validation of your beliefs. if you're acting out as a lone wolf they're offering a degree of fame you wouldn't be able to achieve as a mass shooter, for instance. it's very reciprocal. there's a sense of remote intimacy on social media that can be hard to appreciate if you don't use it a lot. when you talk to sboid on a social media platform and talk to them every day, you feel like you know them. you feel like they're somebody who is in your life. so somebody tweeting from syria who is a member of isis can develop a very emotionally powerful relationship with somebody who is sitting in the united states. that is part of the reason that we have seen people are more willing to mobilize in the name of isis than they were in the name of al qaeda.

isis' radicalization and recruitment practices take place over a spectrum. there's no one thing that they do to try and recruit westerners or try and recruit locally. they attack this from every channel in every direction using a variety of styles and using a very large number of people because isis is a large organization. it can afford to have 2,000 people who tweet 150 times every day. it can afford to have a ratio of two or three recruiters to every one potential recruit who may carry out a lone wolf attack. if there's an area in which we are trailing isis in this struggle, i think it's probably a question of resources. of course, the problem that we face with that is that nobody can really agree how to use those resources. our efforts at encountering violent streamist have a lot of problems that are inherent to

them and we also have a problem from a law enforcement perspective. if you're monitoring 60 or 100 people, it takes 500 people to do that, to monitor those people even on a partial basis let alone 24 hours a day. if these guys jump in a car and drive to texas there's not a lot you can do. i'll save most of the rest of my thoughts for the q anda. i did want to talk about the prospect of an isis organizational terrorist attack. isis has money and manpower to spare. we have not seen that they have an intent to carry out a 9/11 style attack. there's reason to think they might not be as skilled or competent in such an attempt as al qaeda was because of the training cycles they use. i think we should not assume that that's something that couldn't happen, though that they couldn't make an attempt. i think we're much better prepared to prevent something like that today. i don't think isis is an existential threat, but i do

think we need to have realistic expectations expectations of what they might do so that when something happens, we don't overreact in fear. thank you. >> thank you, mr. berger. our next witness is municipality man shake, an expert on radicalization and terrorism and encountering violent extremism. he's consulted on the topic of isis with the u.s. special operations command, central command, nato, interpol and other agencies. first of all mr. sheikh i thank you for having a change of heart after 9/11 and for all the help and support you've given this government in terms of trying to counteract this and also trying to help other young people who might be inspired not be spird. look forward to your testimony. >> in the greeting of jesus christ, peace be unto you.

to the esteemed members of the senate committee, on september 11 2001, i was driving the work when i first heard a plane struck the world trade center. immediately i said god is great: what if the office building i was working in was similarly struck by a plane? i would have perished along with everyone else just as those innocent people perished on that day. for me, september 11, 200 01 was the beginning of the end of the commitment to my extremist mindset. i was born and raised in toronto, canada to indian immigrants. i grew up attending a very conservative brand of koran school, roys of boys separate friday the girls, sitting at wooden benches rocking back and forth reciting the koran in arabics, but not understanding a word of what was red. my daily life, attending public school, the complete opposite of

the ma dress sa. here i could talk to girls and have a normal functional relationship with them. when i left the koran school at age 12 and moved into middle school and high school, i wasn't discriminated against, bullied, picked on or anything of the like. i was actually one of the cool kids. when i was 17 i house a house party which my hyper conservative uncle walked in on. my uncle and other family members were incensed that i would have brought non-muslim friends to my home and spend the next few days berating me. due to the guilt trip hence t born again type seeking to right the wropgs of their past. i would then travel to india and pakistan and in the latter ended up in a place quauld go weta. the center of the group known as al kai dachlt as i walked around the area, i chanced upon ten heavily armed men, one of them

said to me if you truly wish to bring about political change it can only be done by using this and he held aloft his ak-47. i was completely en amored by then them, consistent theme in jihadist literature. in the years following i absorbed myself in claiming that jihad was the only way to change thing. when osama bin laden gave his thoughts, i was on board. then 9/11 happened. wait a second. i get attacking combatants, but this? i realize i needed to study the religion of islam properly. i sold my belongings and moved to syria in early 2002 when there was still some semblance of normality. i attended the class of a scholar who challenged me on my views on jihad an subsequently studied the veries of the koran that the jihadists use to justify hate and destruction. i came to relinquish my views

completely and returned to canada for a new found appreciation for rights of muslims in the west. that year individuals had been arrested in the uk with the london fertilizer bomb plot. one of those individuals was none other than my classmate of the madrasah. i called to give a character refers to the family. it was too late for him. as for me i was recruited by the service as an undercover operative because i felt this was my religious duty. i conducted several infiltration operations both online and on the ground involving religious extremists. one of those cases went on to become a criminal investigation service. i went to the mounted police enforcement team in what came to be known as the toronto 18 terrorism prosecution. i gave fact witness testimony in five hearings over four years at the superior court where 11 individuals were eventually convicted. i've since worked with various mechanisms of the u.s.

government. the national count terrorism center, the office of civil rights and liberty, three main outfits engaged in the study and practice of encountering violent extremism programming. in addition i spent the last few years on twitter directly observed recruitment and propaganda by isis types online. i reference appendix a here that the members should have. i've engaged with many of them male and female, appendix b. as well as some of their victims that they have tried to recruit. my approach is to show how wrong they are and to criticize from the sources they misquote and mutilate. the correct term to describe these ticks, terrorist in islamic costumes. i personally intervened in cases of an american girl these predators were trying to lure away by en ganling her online as someone who can show the real

interpretation of islam. by this i have a good understanding of what is happening in terms of recruitment in terms of counterer messaging as well as the military side of psychological operations which i conveyed at a recent conference held in new york in which the commanding general himself was present. finally, there remains a massive gap in all the areas i've mentioned and that a sustainable, meaningful approach needs to be created. i submit to you it is not as hard as some may suggest that we already have the talent but just need the direction and guidance in order to get it going. just three quick points, some question on terrorist recruitment on prisons. number one terrorist recruitment in prisons is happening all over the world, not just in the u.s. as for the u.s., the numbers are very low. in the western context much of this recruiting remains unseen to the untrained eye and also due to its covert nature and usually does not manifest openly

in the prison institution, but afterwards when the individual has left the facility. number three greater vetting of the types of imams that offer counseling as needed to ensure that pro social messaging is delivered in the context of prison rehabilitation programs. by framing this under pro social messaging, the state avoids having to declare which version of islam they approve of since we all approve of anything that promotes healthy productive and rehabilitative components of counseling. i thank the members here with me and hope this is a start in the discussion in dealing with the cal lengs before us. our next witness is dave veed gartenstein-ross. am i pronouncing that correct? >> that's correct. >> that's very unusual by the way. mr. gartenstein-ross is a senior fellow with the foundation of defense and democracies, adjunct assistant professor in georgetown university securities program, lecturer at catholic

university of america and author of the report "home grown terrorists in the u.s. and u.k." >> it's an honor to appear before you today. what i'm going to focus on in this testimony is the question of what has the u.s. done, what can the u.s. role be in countering this violent messaging. with respect to isis which i think right now is rightly at the center of our concerns, we've seen the most dramatic brand rise of any jihadist organization, in large part because of the reasons that berger lays out. they are excellent messaging, go far beyond what al qaeda and others have done and take advantage of web 2.0, enter activity of the internet which makes somebody who is alone a part of a group. they also are vulnerable, though it's not inevitable to the most dramatic brand reversal of any jihadist organization we've seen. you might have noticed that at

times i.s.'s messaging and the u.s. countermeasuring has been exactly the same. often the u.s. shows the islamic state brutality, people they're killing, people they've tortured and the they proudly proclaim the same thing. the reason is they have a winner's messaging. for them it's not bad to show they're brutal because it shows they're stronger in other groups, can impose their will. very recently as the islamic state has increasing pressure on it particularly being concerned about the pressure put on mosul a statement by aboul suleman and bad difficult was very insightful it asked people not to show the brutality of the islamic state enemies, not to show, for example bombing to kill civilians, not to show the impact of a siege upon the cities. his argument is the islamic state in its messaging will show the brutality of its foes, but

that's always connected to punishment. in other words, they want to show they can deal with their problems. that's what a winner's messaging is, they emphasize their strength, don't want to emphasize weakness. the reason we know they are vulnerable to a brand reversal is because we've seen that before with the exact same organization. back in 2005 to '06 you had a very similar dynamic, not identical, but very similar with al qaeda in iraq which is isis's predecessor. they were known for brutality. shocked people with its videos where they beheaded their victims and thought it was a very romantic organization. people wondered if the amir of al qaeda had surpassed osama bin laden as the leading figure in the jihadist world. we remember in the 2007 through 2009 period they overplayed their hand particularly in the anbar province where right now

they're in the process of inflicting similar although greater brutality on the people. you saw it combined with two other factors, a surge of u.s. stroops in iraq and also u.s. count insurgency tactics. this ended up defeating al qaeda in iraq at the time. their brand went from being sky high to suddenly the entire al qaeda organization wondering what could they do to undo the damage that had been done by their losses in iraq. this was brand reversal. what had once been a symbol of strength, their brutality was reversed into a symbol of having over played their hands and turning the population against them. with respect to isis, its experienced a trajectory of losses. it's been in a somewhat declining phase since october of last year. it's lost territory rather than gaining it. as a result they started to emphasize other ways in which they're strong. one particular way has been their expansion into africa which clearly is at the center

of their current strategy. at times they've exaggerated their games and gotten the media to report on this. i think the best example is their claim to control the city of der nah in northern libya. this is not true, it has never been true, but they've gotten the media to report it through multiple outlets including bbc and cnn. the reason why is they were able to show a photo of an islamic state flag on a government building in der nah and able to also show a video of a parade through der nah with islamic state supporters. this is a city controlled by multiple factions. the fact that they could have a show of force or a flag on a government building is not determinative. it doesn't mean they control the city, but this was reported. you have the cycle in which the islamic state pushes ut its message, the message goes to the media and its supporters. unfor nait natalie the media pushes back the same message. rather than cognitive dissonance

dissonance, both are reporting on the exaggerations and able to do this in areas where social media's penetration is low, so it seems the facts they're putting forward are the only relevant facts. what can the united states do? how can the united states reverse this messaging of strength? one thing we have to fundamentally be able to do is compete at the speed of social media. you're all in government. you understand that our bureaucratic processes would often be hard pressed to compete at the speed of the guttenberg bible, let alone at the speed of social meade yeah. we need to debure october ties competing with them. dealing with the united states is different than dealing with jihadist messaging as a whole. as i've outlined, it has a particular vulnerability that other jihadist groups don't have. in this case what would be very effective is a small cell that is able to operate, that infuses

intelligence analysts those able to see what is the islamic state's messaging, what do they hope to gain and where does it not map with reality? the u.s. government is not always the best voice. often the best voice may be to push information out to media fact sheets selectively declassifying information and giving them information where they can serve as the objective voice of this if you get them reliable information. right nou i know from interactions with the media this sauchb not being done. when i point to an exaggeration of the islamic states often journalists whether print or broadcast are hearing it from me for the first time as opposed to hearing it from the u.s. government. given that media and the battle of perception is so central to what the islamic state is trying to do, the u.s. government has to be more quick to react and to understand the strength of its messaging and to be able to respond at the same kind of speed focusing on the key message of the islamic speed at the same speed in which they can

push out their own message. overall defeating the islamic state's messaging does not defeat jihadism, but this is an important point for a variety of reasons. on an optimistic note, i see promising signs in government that we're starting to shift towards a paradigm of trying to defuse the perception of the islamic state's strength, but it's worth following up to make sure we're taking the appropriate states and there the senate i think can play a major role. thank you all. >> thank you mr. gartenstein-ross. we may not have that rapid communication response capability in the federal government. most of the officials have gone through a campaign, particularly presidential campaigns, have that within the political world, rapid response. maybe that would be a good little piece of legislation we can propose is a rapid response communication team. we pum from campaigns. trust me we've got those capable individuals within our knowledge base. i would like to talk about the

online process. i'd like to ask the question. isis is using social media to connect and to talk. by the way i would like to enter into the record without objection the web pages provided by mr. sheikh. if you haven't read them, read them. it's pretty powerful in terms of the ways isis is using social media. but what's the next step after that? maybe mr. bergen, whoever is more expect in talking about that. they recruit, talk, talk online and then what happens? >> so there is a series of stages you go through with this. typically somebody is exposed to their propaganda that's being broadcast out. this isn't just isis, this is how social media work generally. you find a subject. you take an interest in it. when you start following it online, you see there are other people talking about the same subject and you start conversing

with them. so what we'll typically see is there will be a period where somebody is consuming this stuff in the public. if somebody is seriously interested and willing to take a step further or consider a step further, they will take it to a private format. that can be direct message on twitter which can't be read in the open source or on facebook. more often they'll go to an encrypted app such as whatsapp or kick which allows you -- basically text messages with an element of encryption. >> our authorities can file the open source social media. the minute those individuals who are serious about it go off-line, we go dark. we lose our capability of following that and we really have no idea. is that basically correct? >> well, you can approach it with subpoena and other authorities. >> if we can decrypt. >> yes. >> that's part of the problem. sill gone valley is resistant to

allowing us to decrypt. even if they were to allow it, there will be off sites off, offshore that will also decrypt. we're losing our capability of being able to follow this. >> i would also add, the ability of government to follow it on open social media sauchb murky. people in different agencies have different understandings of what they're legally allowed to do when it comes to monitoring communication of americans, even on open communication platforms. that's something where a government-wide initiative to clarify authorities would be very helpful. >> it wasn't in your testimony. but in my prep apparently you have a publication your best guess is there are 46,000 overt isis supporter accounts on twitter. maybe a high number of 90,000. can you describe what you're talking about by an overt isis supporter account? >> that figure was from late last year. it's much smaller now

significantly smaller. >> why is that? >> because twitter has started aggressively suspending accounts. the criteria we used, we had a series of step. if you're tweeting i love isis all day long you're an isis supporter. if you're not doing that in an obvious way we looked at who you followed and who followed you to try to see if there was a clear case. it was a very conservative approach to coding somebody as a supporter, effectively somebody not trying to conceal their isis. >> mr. sheikh, as somebody who is trying to prevent young girls, for example or other people that are making those connections, where are they going now then? is there alternative? >> they will remain in the orbit of their particular networks. what i try to do is engage them openly and directly online. i've seen others try to do that as well. in fact, you're seeing people

even on the al qaeda site strangely arguing against isis types, making theological arguments which is strange considering they're al qaeda. they will continue to orbit their networks. those that do go off into the whatsapp and kik. i don't follow them off-line into that. but that is what they do. >> there are officials of the u.s. government going into muslim communities talking and one of the reports we got back, and i was very surprised to hear this, is because of the revelations of edward snowden, there seems to be a perception in america that federal government knows all and we have perfect knowledge and we know exactly who is on line and we know exactly who is on these sites and is becoming radicalized. the members of those communities were very surprised that we had no idea. can you speak to that mr. shaikh, the necessity of members of different communities to be

policing themselves and reporting that from dhs if you see something, say something. >> i think hollywood has done this as well given the idea that the intelligence services are omnipresent and all knowing. maybe in some cases that's a good thing, that people think that we can see everything. of course, on the other hand, this is something that the government agencies are trying to achieve get into the communities and give them something by which they can convince their own communities outside of law enforcement that, look, these are things you need to watch for. these are your kids being lured over by these individuals. these are your parents that will end up in front of tv cameras as they attend court or whatever it is. these are your mosques that are going to see press and retaliatoriry attacks and things like that. it's an ongoing challenge with the communities, a level of

mistrust. professional naysayers community org saisers that are very obstructionist in the ways they approach this. this is an issue that continues to play out. >> my final question really springs from a very interesting article written by graham wood in "the atlantic." i think verified by testimony. the significance of the territory held and the caliphate established, how that is driving the process, driving the narrative, perhaps you'd like to speak to that, mr. bergen. >> i think the response is that's true. if you don't control a population, they control about eight to million people as your claim to be the caliphate disappears, which has an important strategic implication which is we need to keep chipping away or demolishing this caliphate. >> again what does that inspire

in the minds, in the hearts of followers? what is the call? what is required once the caliphate is established? >> i think the call, and this is where it gets complicated and goes a little bit to what mubin was talking about. for some muslims they feel i want to be supportive. that doesn't mean i want to become a fighter for isis. as a matter for the law enforcement community and the congress to think about, if somebody is not actually indicted for a potential act of terrorism but merely for trying to go to syria we should be thinking about off-ramps that aren't 15 years in prison. right now if muslim families see a son or daughter radicalizing and they call the fbi that son or daughter may get 15 years in prison.

in minneapolis there is a case, something other than a long prison term for a 19-year-old man that is in process. it's a model we should be thinking about going forward. >> before i turn it over to the ranking member, anybody else want to respond to that? >> i think this also speaks to what he mentioned which is the debate between al qaeda and isis supporters online. the reason al qaeda never declared a caliphate is because they didn't think they could create something that would have staying power. if the caliphate gets chipped away geographically, you'll see much more within jihadist circles people attacking the decision to declare the caliphate in the first place which is one reason, as i said, they're susceptible to brand reversal. jihadists themselves would turn on them if they start to lose the territorial advantage. as to the question of what is required, for someone who believes that the caliphate has been legitimately declared, if they don't accept the caliphate's authority, then they die in a state of sin. this also gets to one of the

intrajihadist debates, as to whether it's legitimate caliphate. for people who support it as was outlined, it can be anything from going over there and living in the caliphate, and that certainly is a pull, for those who aren't able to do so or those more well situated to carry out attacks due to the home front, that's one reason they've been so successful compared to other organizations in having a prompt to action. they have a lot of things going for them right now that make them acting essentially from a position of strength and within their very small target audience from a position of religious legitimacy. >> so. >> i think so, yes. also to make sure those losses are being broadcast because it has a magnifies effect, being broadcast from multiple actors, including civil society activists. essentially, as we improve our communications capabilities one thing it does is allows those

who are opposed to isis to have a better vehicle to attack isis with. >> thank you. apologized to the committee members for going over time. i thought that was important. senator carper. >> again thank you all for your testimony and your responses to our questions. mr. berger, i think you used the word murky in your comments to describe the authority with which our officials have to do certain actions. go back and mention this again. let's revisit this for a moment. >> well fundamentally i don't think there's a consensus in government that you can do large-scale monitoring of social media, open social media of american citizens without a probable cause to investigate. the role we see in social media in a lot of cases, we have seen some plots and people intending to travel who are detected on social media. more often what we see is social

media provides an evidence trail to go after an arrest after you've identified a suspect. fundamentally, for instance there are questions about how we collect and archive this data and who we collect an archive on it. do we need to have a reason to go after it or can we sweep up thousands and thousands of accounts. in the case of gar land if we had been sweeping up those accounts we would have a more clear idea of the suspect in open source. you can go after it with subpoenas, try to retrieve the data in various ways when twitter suspends an account, that information is no longer available. this user had seven previous accounts, and we don't have that available to us in the open source to talk about that, and i don't know if law enforcement has that available, if they had been archiving it, if they have access to it via subpoena. i'm not sure twitter saves the date tachlt i'm pretty sure they

do, but not entirely sure. these are the kind of questions. i think the appetite in the country isn't friendly to the idea that the fbi should be backing up thousand and thousands and thousands of social media accounts. these are the kind of things i think that are in play. when you go from agency to agency there's different kinds of boundary issues that we've run into over the course of some years. several years ago there were issues in terms of military investigating americans who were in al qaeda, in pakistan in afghanistan, military intelligence sometimes had to take names out of documents because the privileges that we afford american citizens in different contexts are sometimes not totally clear how you reconcile that with a pragmatic approach. >> thank you. this would be more for mr. gartenstein-ross and again mr.

berger. is it more invantage ous for companies to shut down social media accounts that promote isis or like-minded messaging or keep those open for intelligence purposes. mr. gartenstein-ross? >> j.m. has done some very good work on showing the disruptive impact that it has. there's a very big debate amongst analysts as to whether you shut the accounts down. on the one hand you their ability to radicalize people to action. on the other hand, you have the ability to gather information on them. i think increasingly that debate is becoming settled because we can see with isis the massive impact that these accounts have had. the amount of people who have been drawn to the syria iraq theater is greater already than it was during the afghan-soviet war in terms of the number of foreign fighters that have come.

social media plays a big part in that. in general it's advantageous to shut these accounts down. this is something that should be a company's decision. the u.s. government has no authority to do that with one exception, if jihadists get frustrated with getting shut down on twitter or facebook they may create their own website. at which case our superiority in terms of technological capabilities plays a whole. that's the kind of site we can shut down wholesale without any free speech or constitutional problems. >> mr. bergen, very quickly. >> the intelligence argument is important, but ultimately the the goal of intelligence is to stop terrorists from doing whatever they want to us. you take that into the context of an attack you get a lot of intelligence if the terrorist successfully carries out an attack.

in the same way in a lower scale, i think we shouldn't give them carte blanche to do whatever they want because it allows us to make nice charts and spreadsheets. >> this would be a question for all the panelists. i would like to focus on root causes, not just on addressing symptoms of problems but addressing the underlying root causes. what are the root causes or underlying causes that compel americans to engage in violence in the name of jihad? what common factors, if any do these individuals share? mr. bergen? >> it's a tough one. i've looked at hundreds of cases of americans who have been drawn to jihadi activity. there is no ethnic profile. some of these people -- on average they tend to be slightly better educated than most americans. on the other hand you have people from criminal backgrounds. it's very hard to make a one size fits all description. in another era, in the 1970s

perhaps these people might have been drawn to weather underground or the black panthers t promise to remake society through violence. we've seen that throughout history. but there is no really good answer to that question. it's a form of question of what draws people to crime? the answer is too complicated to say in a very quick and sound bitey kind of way. mr. berger? >> i would agree with that. i think what we see is there are clusters of causality. in the al shabaab in minnesota, you can see why that happened, so many from minnesota. you can look at towns, for instance, der nah, where an organization has a long history that gives you some insight into why that group of people goes. but when you look to sort of generalize it's very difficult. who you know the probably the most important thing. that's where the social media

comes in. if you can know somebody in isis very easily online, then that presents greater risk. >> thank you. mr. shaikh? >> i share the same caveats on the complexity. i will give a sound bite version. without grievances, ideology doesn't resonate. without ideology grievances are not acted on. i think the intersect between ideology and grievances do play a significant role in this. >> all right. thank you. >> i think we've been articulated very well. let me focus on one thing related to this question which is what can the u.s. do? >> that's always a good question. >> we're in the world right now where ideas catch on much faster, whether they're good ideas or bad ideas. it's easy to achieve a critical mass. that can play sauf of as mubin says grievances and ideology can intersect together. the question is what are we doing to ameliorate grievances?

we live in a world that doesn't have perfect justice, a world of finite resources and a world of competition. if you look at what companies are doing, corporations in the united states, those who are prospering are transparent in terms of decision making, in terms of what they're doing. the companies that are more legacy type industries and floundering are less transparent and more top-heavy. in many ways u.s. government looks like a legacy industry. there are many representatives who are good at this is be much more transparent in terms of the u.s.'s decision making. there's a lot of hard choices to make. j.m. berger outlined before, the hard decision in terms of monitoring american's use of social media. on the one hand we understand that people who are on twitter and radicalizing can pose a danger. on the other hand, when we think of the fbi sweeping thousands and thousands of accounts and archiving them forever that in many ways seems like 1984 by

george orwell. i think it can help diffuse part of that grievance. moving forward we're in a world where grievances, weather real or imagined can catch on quickly. the u.s. can feel what it should be to minimize the u.s. being a target. >> good. thank you all. >> thank you senator carper. our vote that was scheduled at 10:30 has been moved to 2:00. so we won't have interceptions. senator sass. >> thank you mr. chair manned all of you for being here. after reading your testimony my mainline of questioning was going to be about how you create strategic brand damage to eye sill and future jihadi groups. before we go there i'd like to have a detour. dr. gartenstein-ross, your comments about the interplay between traditional and social media and obviously the media cycles of people wanting to make news today on social media to be picked up by producers on

traditional media. can you unpack your der nah comments. >> der nah was a case in which you didn't have much social media. isis essentially started out oopgs with information dominance, that's because reporters couldn't get in to der nah to fact check. we've had two separate sets of reporters who ventured in both of these reporters tunisians and have gotten executed in the last couple weeks. when they have this information about what's happening and they're pushing it out and others aren't pushing it it out on social media the way the news cycle work nous here is information and there's no competing information and maybe you'll check with a few sources. media moves much quicker, much less fact checking. it's easier to get an invented fact out there and to have it widely repeated which i think is exactly what happened in der

nah. >> dr. bergen, this is not to put you on the spot because i don't know how cnn covered the issue. can you walk us through how decisions in a circumstance like that are made? >> i'm not familiar enough with cnn's reporting on that. as a general matter cnn has got a very careful fact checking process. >> but you don't know if you reported that isis had taken der nah. >> i'm not here to comment on cnn's reporting on that. >> dr. gartenstein-ross, one of the things that's unique about isil versus al qaeda in iraq is a more decentralized structure as opposed to a more top-down structure. obviously this creates unique opportunities for them to capture entrepreneurial activity on social media. at the same time it seems harder for them to control their brand. they have a deficit in terms of

trying to have a territorial claim with the caliphate. to the degree they have a more decentralized structure and can exploit social media over time, do you think that means their brand becomes diffuse, or if they can suffer losses because they'll eventually suffer territorial losses what does that do to their larger social media strategy? >> i conceptualize them as having both a centralized and also decentralized structure. on the one hand they have a bureaucratic system systems of government, official accounts. then you have the vast number of people who are fighters who are tweeting from the battlefield. they have put directives in place, it's actually very clear. to try to rein some of these guys in. at the end of the day, when you have a large number of people on twitter, it's difficult to fully control your message. that's something the u.s. military also grapples with as well. just like isis, we have directives, although we have an easier job of reigning our guys in obviously.

with respect to isis' brand, it has a trajectory of its brand overall being affected by people of multiple layers those central to the communications apparatus and those at the fringes. the answer is, yes, it happens more difficulty controlling its brand. i referenced before the statement by al gentleman bad difficult, the supporter of isis trying to say don't broadcast the enemy's atrocities don't broadcast how hard life is in cities under siege only broadcast strength. if you look at my argument theirs is a winner's message. that's a very hard message to enforce when that's not actually what's going on. you don't just have isis fighters. you have people living in these cities and you can see some resistance movements have sprung up. they're going to have a hard time keeping their message the same, just like we have trouble controlling them on social media. they're increasingly as they're

entrenched as a government force and failing government force, they're experiencing something like insurgent activity. i don't want to overstate the dissension within the ranks but you clearly have it. they've had it for a while. it's increasing now. >> mr. shaikh, i'd be interested in your thoughts on that question. >> thank you, sir. of course, i agree very much of course with what daveed was saying. i think we need to continue to amplify the mistakes they make the weakness in the ranks the dissension in the ranks, especially when it comes to educating potential recruits, individuals, teenagers who may want to travel. in the beginning when a lot of this began, there was a concept called five star jihad where they were putting out -- they had taken over some guy's villa and they were swimming in a nice pool in the back and they were

saying, hey, come on down. for a while i actually took a lot of screen grabs of food pictures they had posted. we had swedish gummy bears, guys posting -- kabobs? we got that. a mango milkshake saying how can i not take a picture of that. the epitome of a identity crisis u.k. resident living in syria referring to pizza as home cooked food. i think to educate people just by using their own mistakes, their own failing, this is another way in which we can achieve our objective. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you senator sasse senator peters. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you to the panelists for your testimony today. i want to explore a little bit more in depth about some of the countermessaging that we need to do particularly with the broader muslim community here in the united states. i think it's important to remember when we're talking

about folks engaged in these activities with extremism it's just a tiny, tiny sliver of the muslim community here in the united states. i have a very large middle eastern population in michigan one of the largest populations outside the middle east as you know in my community. it's certainly an opportunity for us to harness that community which is strongly opposed to isis and other extremist groups. in fact, there are regular protests against the activities of isis as a pre version of islam and not reflective of the broader muslim community, folks want to be engaged in that countermessaging which is ultimately the way you try to delegitimize the ideology associated with it. i know the white house has made this outreach with their empower local partners to prevent violent extremism efforts also part of the sum many this year at the white house summit. a 2013 rand corporation report

highlights challenges to countering violent extremism online including alienation and the u.s. approach to counterterrorism among american muslims as well as the over securitized approach. i've heard from some of my constituents concerned about pushing back against this violent extremism and these lies online because they think it might draw some undue attention to them personally as they engage, even though these are anti messaging that they're doing. some of them have also experienced racial profiling, other activities at airports because of their muslim heritage and so have certainly some level of distrust when it comes to law enforcement activities. yet, this is an incredible opportunity for us to use patriotic americans muslim americans who live here in our country. if familiars can address a little bit, how can we engage this community what would you suggest and what are the messages that would be

important? mr. shaikh we could start with you, but others who can weigh in we'd like your comments as well. >> thank you very much. i'm actually doing my phd in psychology and looking at community interveners and what works in intervention programs. there is this -- i call them professional obstructionists, community organizations who are hyper defensive, they really mistrust the government and have portrayed any kind of even meaningful sincere interactions between law enforcement and the community as just as an excuse to intelligence gather. given that level of mistrust, how can we do it? i think there's a way to do it. first and foremost, the muslim community understands -- as you observed, the muslim community doesn't want anything to do with isis. really if you look at the tens of millions of muslims living in

europe, northern america we have a maximum amount of 5,000 foreign fighters. that that's a small amount of people. first and foremost, the muslim community needs to understand that it affects us first and foremost i think. isis kills more muslims than non-muslims. when they do what they do it's the muslim community that feels the retallization discrimination marginalization. i think it's on behalf of the religion. we have a duty to speak up and give the correct understanding of the religion lead by example. and there is a way to still work with law enforcement, but at the same time keep them arm's length. that is to use programming that is developed in house in the communities where the law enforcement agencies understand what the communities are using so they can back off and say, yeah, we understand they have this identifying vulnerable person's guide let's say and we understand they have a

mechanism in place where they can give rehabilitative programming without it necessarily being a top-down approach. just lastly i think -- of course, people have their views free speech, of course. but we have to be very careful not to perpetuate the isis ideology which is islam is to blame. if we do and this say muslims are terrorists and islam is all about terrorism that is exactly what isis says. in fact, i've seen that you have people who are very anti muslim, they even use the exact same verses of the koran that isis uses. if you didn't see the name, you would swear it was an isis account doing the promoting. i think there are multiple layers to this. it can be done but it needs solid direction i think and community leadership. >> and direction from within the community, that it's an organic process, but also in that process law enforcement here in the united states understand to

let the community lead and back it up and to back off, if i'm paraphrasing what you said accurately. >> the closing point, local police are best suited for this. the local police are the ones who respond if somebody throws a rock through the mosque or if there's a crime that happens in the community. they're not seen as investigating terrorism like the fbi would be. the fbi would have big problems in dealing with them at that level. there is a way to develop relationships that needs to be done. >> thank you. anybody else want to add to that? >> just to give a couple specific examples, we can't take down all bad speech even though that's desirable. but we can help reenforce better speech. rowdy chowdhry goes around training muslim american leaders and imams, many of whom who don't understand how to use it themselves, about how to use it google rankings. it's hard to measure countering

violent extremism. this is an example of something concrete and working. another is a woman called nadia from oxford who is aggregating all satirical content about isis in arabic online. satire is a very powerful weapon against this kind of group. finally the u.s. government can't engage in a theological debate for all sorts of various reasons. this group positions itself as a defender of islam. the victims are overwhelmingly muslim. it's a statement that requires no special knowledge of islam. it's a powerfully undercutting message for what this group is trying to say about themselves to the muslim world. >> i'm out of time. >> thank you senator peters. senator booker. >> i want to jump right in. in preparing for this hearing i was surprised, if not stunned, at how we're approaching our

messaging and our countermessaging frankly. i find it clearly there are 24.9 million muslims living in the united states and half of them are under 30. we're talking about a very young population. i agree with senator peters, the overwhelming 99 point whatever percent are good young people that reflect the rest of the population. but we're dealing with a population of young people that are online and engaged in an extraordinary manner. in the middle east, you a greater percentage of people that are under 30 years old. and the new form of communication is social media. 90% of americans age 18 to 29 use social media. nine in ten 18 to 29-year-olds watch online video. almost half of them, that's where they get their news. i know a little bit about social media, i have to say. when i started going around to the sites that we have in our various agencies, dhs, national counterterrorism, state

department, i was shocked at what we're doing in counter messaging. i want to pass this ipad around to my colleagues. two things to take note of. two tabs at the top and you can toggle between. one is a youtube video. hundreds of hours going up every minute on youtube. the videos they're doing are incredibly slick fancy and attractive. here a bunch of extremist terrorists giving things out to kids. if you toggle back over to the united states and what we're doing, here is the "think and turn away" website. if you know anything about social media, the one thing you should do is look at the engagement of people on our social media feeds. it's laughable. three retweets two retweets. if you think about this, last year -- at least fiscal year '13, we spent $196 million on

the voice of america. this is old school media. it's radio and the like. mr. gartenstein-ross, how much money are we spending on social media countermessaging. >> it's a small percentage. as you point out, a lot of things what we push out via social media is crude. >> crude is a generous statement. you said a wonderful phrase. you said we need to compete at the speed of social media. mr. bergen you said in your written testimony that the one thing that unifies these folks is their age and that they're online. you would think if this is one of the threats when you ask counterterrorism people here in the united states what's their biggest concern is domestic lone wolf individuals. this is where the majority of

them are getting radicalized which is on line in social media. if we have an adequate response to that, it's very frustrating. mr. shaikh, your work sin credible. i see you online trying to push back on this. there are easy tactics -- i know them, as you said from politics how to get more voice and virality to messaging. the data you're presenting as muslims killing muslims, and this is a group killing more muslims. look at their fancy means compared to what we're not doing. so i just want to start with mr. shaikh, it likes to me like you're trying to do countermessaging, but we have a government that's spending millions and millions of dollars on old school forms of media

and, as you said, mr. gartenstein-ross, very crude social media efforts. what do you imagine could be done if we're going to do an effective social media online countermessaging effort? >> thank you very much. in some kind of defense to the center for strategic counterterrorism communications, they have a very small group of people. they're trying to contest the space. they're trying to do something, and i get that. yes, crude is a very polite statement. look, at the end of the day if you want to fight back against recruitment of 15-year-old kids you need to work with 15-year-old kids. when i see my own kids showing examples of what affects them and what motivates them and what resonates with them, it tells me that this is exactly what you need to do. talk to the kids. they can do a really good job. with respect to producing

material, one of the comments that i said, really i feel it's unacceptable especially given -- you have hollywood in the u.s. you have people you don't even need to go at that level. maybe this is something that should be done to go at that level. to blow the production capabilities out of the water. but even college levels, high school kids to be given projects for them to do just as part of a school project as part of a civic engagement process, even muslim organizations. maybe you have the ngos who can fund projects within the community to come up with these sorts of things. the government is really not well placed other than if you were to take it to the covert level of psychological operations and then you do have individuals who know influence activities, who know to generate stuff which they can deploy but in a more covert manner. again, multiple layers. there is a way to do it. >> mr. bergen, very little time left. when i was mayor of newark, we

saw the dimensions of our city were incredibly negative. we set out on social media and used a sentiment analysis that engagement in social media began to brand of our city. i'm just wondering. you talked a little bit in our testimony about crowding out negative messages. i've seen people do this in negative forms and there's different strategies. how do you characterize what we're doing to crowd out the message to sort of compete within the space to begin to push other messages? how would you describe our attempts and is there a better way to centralize and coordinate across numerous agencies a better push for the united states? >> nctc has been doing some of this work and trying to wrk with some of the tech companies and there's a problem with the u.s.

government being involved. it has to be hands off. it's not all doom and gloom. there are people out there doing the kind of work that's necessary. >> thank you very much. >> thank you senator. let's face it, we invented the internet, the social network sites. we've got hollywood, the capabilities as he was saying to blow these guys out of the water from the standpoint of communication communication. we need to work on that and work on it quickly. senator. >> i want to thank the chairman and appreciate senator booker's comments as well. it strikes me though in hearing your answers. it makes sense that this isn't going to just be a government function. i think engaging the private sector and ngo's and others to help us do that, we can provide

the support for that. i think that would be great to establish those partnerships to be able to make that happen. i was very interested in reading in your testimony about women that there seems to be an attraction for young women. with more than i think a historical basis to isis and talking about that and it seems to me as i look at some of these on social media they almost romanticize what is happening in iraq and syria and who these women want to join or i guess connect themselves in the u.s. or in some other western country with isis and so it strikes me the more we can get the truth out also whether it's embedding

reporters or what's really the conditions are i know it's dangerous so that's challenging. however we can get the truth out on what's happening on the ground that this isn't some kind of romantic endeavor you're probably traveling to or asking to engage in. i wanted to get thoughts on how we address this with women. >> that's right, senator. 20% of the sample, we looked at it from the united states women and about 10% are from the west unprecedented. why they're going there they're told it's a perfect society. the average anyone is 19. how do we contest that? i think you're exactly right. we saw this in the minnesota case when people started saying it's not the promise land but it took two or three years but

we're at the point there's enough bad stories coming out that's a reasonable idea. >> the information we have that undermines their strength is mostly eyewitness testimony from defectors and that's not as compelling as photographs, video and audio. one of the things that i proposed is that in as much we can deploy intelligence assets is to get pictures intercept communications and things that are much more dpripgripping and compelling instead of one person's story. radicals are convinced they have the right idea anyway. >> if i can jump in. on the flip side there's a side

which is a twitter feed of what's going on. there's pictures of bread lines and they're saying it's only on for three hours a day. the point is there's an alternative universe on social media portraying what's really happening that exist and we should understand and know about. >> absolutely. we should promote it and encourage people to see what's really happening because i think there's sort of a romanticized view pushed out there that's attractive to people. i wanted to get your thoughts on the leader of isis. using social media using information to put out a certain image of himself that is not line up with the truth and so how do we what's your thought on the leader now? i understand we take out a leader and another leader can follow but he seems to have portrayed himself in a certain

way. what thauthds do you have for us to undermine the leadership to show they're not really who they per port to be? >> i think he's an spresing figure in this case. he has a basic biography which is calculated to support the legitimacy of naming him kali frk ff. the image he projects is someone who speaks rarely. as such, he is somewhat replaceable replaceable. you can bring your expectations to who he is and he doesn't have the personality like someone

like bin laden did. he may be an important strategic thinker in the group. replacing him may undercut their ability to operate but maybe not. >> how important is it that we thinking about what isis is doing on the ground and trying to establish this. it gives them a greater ability to recruit because it shows the legitimacy. >> i think the short answer is yes to that. >> one element of this that i would just bring up because we talked about how their loss of

territory would undermind their recruiting and it would. isis is also traditionally what happens with groups like this is when the prophesies they are filling turn out to be not correct, they'll double down on violence. we could see very disastrous secondary effects with that. >> we seen it with al qaeda. >> we seen it with al-shibab. they don't have the same platform isis has built on. >> thank you. >> senator portman. >> thanks mr. chairman. thanks for having the hearing. this has been fascinating. i appreciate the experts coming and talking to us about this. let me give you a case study from ohio the middle of the

country. we're concerned with radicalization. one is christopher lee o'neal. he wanted to come here and bomb the capitol. that happened earlier this year. he's under arrest. just last month columbus was charged. trying to conduct a terrorist attack here in the united states. one is a classic long wolf right. so he's on the internet, gets radicalized, a loaner. the second is a member of the community in central ohio as i understand it, the. i know members of the community were very concerned about the radicalization. they were engaged and involved in it. the leaders are working hard to have a productive dialogue about

it. it's two different changes. also, the long wolf. i looked at your apiendapend sis and unbelievable the things they are doing. a sub part of that would be a specific question i've always had. you've got three groups, dhs bfi all working together to try to support the community outreach programs understanding it as mr. shake said the local