verbatim, and i quote, that japan cannot enforce any sort of access. in fact, the state department, in the report, is carved out what appears to be a novel exception to the goldman act. not just cases awaiting submission. but already submitted cases are excluded for the purposes of compliance. in other words, once a case is submitted to a court in japan and forced into mediation or litigation the state department has taken the position that the japanese authority is off the hook. that these cases simply because the courts and not the jca itself are responsible for gaining timely access to the children. once the case is submitted the state department and jca claim they can wash their hands of all responsibility to the children in a timely manner.

so even if a court takes ten years to provide one hour of access to a child, a country will be considered compliant for purposes of the goldman act. under an exception that is nowhere to be found in the language of the goldman act. what is completely unforgivable, mr. chairman, in my opinion, is that this american shell game is absolutely to the detriment of american children, quote, crime victims. note, there are voices of reform in japan. including high-level officials who want to see a change in japan's domestic laws. we need to support them in condemning the current system in japan. and not undermine their reform efforts by sugarcoating reality. these are people who really want to see japanese laws change for the better. people like the justice minister who in direct response to

captain tolland's case was quoted in the newspaper saying that child custody should be based on the child's best interest and not just on who has been raising the child following an abduction. people like the japanese minister who stated that parental abduction should be regards as child abuse. their abductors are not fit to be child custodians. people like chief justice tarota of the japanese supreme court who stated publicly there's increased scrutiny of these cases due to the signing of the hague and that it is the japanese responsibility of the court by restating the real affairs of japan in international trends and custody laws. these reformers understand just how behind japan really is. why is the state department still covering up for japan? at the end of the day, what we all need to do here is acknowledge where the problem is coming from. there's a massive elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.

the elephant in the radio is the inherent interest for abduction cases. as they see it, to maintain good strategic relations with allies such as japan, a very good cause. and this is in direct conflict with the interest of our children and the children of japan whose advocacy would require the state department to publicly shame and reprimand japan for its complicity in the kidnappings. a regime that violates some of the most basic human rights of parents and children alike. state department officials have told us, the military bases in japan and the economic interests thatby have do not allow them, quote, demand compliance from japan. the strategic relationship is too important. too important to advocate for our children. too important even when an act of congress, the goldman act, in this case requires them to publicly shame japan by simply

speaking the truth. their job requires them to navigate through a huge untenable conflict of interest. to maintain interests with japan while at the same time calling them out to human rights violations. honorable members of parents before you require the state department to do its job to tell the truth and we implore congress to require the state department to redo this report and be honest. help the reformers in japan by holding japan accountable and declare japan to be noncompliant. i want to conclude by offering a solution. we've seen this situation before, with the state department's conduct surrounding international trade. the state department was found to drag its feet, lie and obfuscate. and in investment of trade and diplomacy. indeed, the kennedy administration and its wisdom

found that the state department had an inherent conflict of interest in dealing strongly with our trading partners who were not dealing fairly with us. so president kennedy created a new office, office of trade representative. out there the 1980s, the u.s. became perturbed in the state department's concerns of trying to rein in a huge deficit. remember the '80s? i do remember who the problematic country was? that's right, japan. so what did congress do about it. the authority was further enhanced under the omnibus trade and competitiveness act of 1988. section 61 of the 1988 legislation codified the responsibilities. in so doing reinforcing the

partnership for the u.s. trade policy. the legislation required that the senior representative on any body that the president establishes through advising through economic policies in which international trade matters predominate. and the ustr should be involved in all. it's my firm opinion that this is exactly what congress will meet to do with the executive branch to aggressively add row indicate for our children without the burden of conflict of interest. i have learned in my many years of national business that a good cop negotiation strategy only works if there's a good cop in the room. asking state to be simultaneously the good cop and

bad cop simply will not work. like the trade czar, the ustr is what what we really need say child abduction czar, accountable directly to the congress and president. a u.s. children's representative office as a senior representative on any body that the president advises on child abduction policies. this children's right czar should be included in all summit or international meetings and and should have its own agenda that is not subject to the desires of any specific country at stake. this office would be staffed not by people who pass the foreign service exam with degrees in international relations in area studies but, rather, people with degrees and experience in child welfare, child psychology and family law. they would be true advocates for abducted and abused children and

be measured by the president and congress on their progress. mr. chairman, i know we cannot get to such legislation and get it enacted overnight. the ustr took decades to develop to its current state. but that needs to be strategic direction. our children have to be, as important to us as international trade considerations. our kids' human rights have to supersede other issues with foreign countries in the context of bilateral relations. they should, but at present, they don't. and this is causing an enormous amount of suffering, needless suffering, by the parents sitting before you here. the thousands of parents who are not in attendance today. and the thousands of abducted american citizen children out there the world. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much for your testimony and for your tenacity of speaking not just for yourself and your family, but for all of the families. ms. barboure. >> just to inform you, my testimony will be paraphrased -- >> would you -- >> i did. just for the record, my testimony will be paraphrased and i would request that it be submit >> without objection, yours and all other statements and any additional materials you'd like to have attached to your testimony will be made a

part of the record. >> thank you. chairman smith, thank you for submitting your time to address this issue of child abduction and the instrumentation of the goldman act hence forth referred to as icapra. without your constant vigilance over icapra. i and the thousands of other victimized by it would be all alone. many of us have been begging to be properly represented to our children by our government. thank you for answering the plea. in my family's case my children were legally abducted to tunisia by their father, a tunisia native in 2011. at the time i had full custody of two children preventing either of us from traveling outside of the united states with either child. because there are no formal

legal agreements between the us and tunisia, i relocated to tunis in january 2012 in order to pursue my custody rights in their had reports. in october 2012 i obtained a tunisia primary ruling of both in the united states. and that ruling was appealed, and i later obtained concurrent judgments through both the tunisia appellant and supreme courts upholding my rights of custody to both children, declaring their best needs to be served. they have refused to implement the laws and these rulings remain unenforced to this day. prior to the passing of icapra, the state os, the u.s. consulate in tunisia, and ambassador susan jacobs have been very active in our case. this support, coupled with the

avid representation i received from senators assured me with the passing of icapra our case would be resolved and our family would be reunited on u.s. soil. unfortunately that is not the case, to secure the return of my baby he remains illegally retained with his father in tunisia. i further believe this is do to intentional resistance on behalf of state to icapra. and the diplomatic of its full enforcement. i refer to the compliance report to support these claims. i'm thankful in its testimony, state has provided an account of how many children have been represented by the report. while the report makes

consistent references to cases out there there is not one instance where an abducted child is counted. my question is simple, why? why wasn't a single child accounted for in 2014? and how did the central authority for the united states use sight of the significance for every searching parent that it represents to have his or her child counted? after scrutinizing the 45-page report submitted to congress i have no current understanding of how many cases occur in the united states, how many children are affected and no means of assessing whether the means of

abduction have increased, decreased or remain the same. simply providing cases without identifying a total number of children affected does not bring us to a closer understanding of the breadth on the american public. the compliance report is riddled with gross numerical manipulations. as exemplified by a cursory review of the tunisia section of table 2 where neither the unresolved case of islam or zania returned home with me in august of 2014 appeared to be represented. it also clearly articulates its policy of increasing the number of signatories to the convention as its major goal. this policy of pushing the convention as a remedy has not been shown to affect the resolution in any existing case. and i believe the devastating repercussions for our families to abductions to japan provide strong evidence to that. to be clear, icapra as written is a fair and strong law if applied will result in the return of our illegally retained abducted children abroad. remedies 4 through 7 as provided in section 202d. the policy and directive of oci and to avoid politically and

contentious revenues speaks volumes. at this time, my baby is a vulnerable united states citizen who is being denied his constitutional rights under tunisia law, international law and u.s. law. despite the various by state and representative, the fbi and legal counsel, the tunisian government continues to issue our case while opening its pockets to the ever increasing financial allotments that state provides to the republic annually. clearly if a slim counts then state must redouble its efforts to account for every abducted child in its report and apply every actual remedy provided for an i capra to assure their return. as you know there's so much more to be said about this very important topic. given time constraints i must conclude my testimony.

i thank you. >> thank you very much for your testimony. we will try to have an additional hearing in july because there is a 90-day window where the application of the sanctions, hopefully, there will be significant and robust sanctions against those 22 countries. and i would hope that they would revisit japan because japan absolutely has to be on the list of this. it is a declaring omission. i'd like to yield before going to mr. palmer, to elliott angle, the ranking member of the committee. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to just make a brief statement, and then i think we'll call for votes. first of all, i want to thank you for scheduling today's hearing. and i want to thank you your tireless advocacy through all

the years we've both served in congress together. i know of no one who fights harder four for causes for which you believe and are effective in fighting those causes. so i think everyone here should understand how much of this is driven by you. you drive the agenda and you make the mark and you do good. i just want to say that. i'm here because i want to show my support on this issue which affects more american answer that we know. in my district, a good constituent here, we have the case of a parent internationally abducted american child. mr. chairman, i know you've been a champion of returning american abducted children back to their home.

and reforms to the system. there are a few crimes that are more heart wrenching than child abduction. as a parent of three, i can't even imagine her anguish and pain felt by the parent who had a child abducted and taken to another country. they often are at the mercy of foreign courts with different cultural conceptions of custody. and arbitrary determinations what constitutes abduction of what it or isn't in the child's best interest and usually it's not in the child's best interest which they say it is. the most effective tool will is the 1980 hague conference, this treaty creates a global standard and requires signatories to return abducted children to the country of the child's habitual residence for custody hearing. unfortunately and very

regrettably, there are significant gaps in the hague treaty. for what we need to fill those gaps. i think that's something positive that we need to do. international child abduction is an underreported incident and often overlooked crime which traumatically impacts the lives the children and parents involved. we need to return abducted children back to the united states seriously. i want to thank my constituent for being here. for her courage. we're there with you. keep in mind, you're not alone, and we're going to do everything we can to help. again, i would like to end for thanking my colleague, mr. smith, for his tireless effort on this important issue. thank you very much. >> mr. engle, thank you very much for your excellent statement. your leadership. i think the american people need to know more and more, we work across the aisle. it's always a privilege to work with eliot engel, the ranking democrat on the full committee. thank you so much. mr. palmer who is from -- sorry. i thank you for being here. and look forward to your testimony. >> thank you. good afternoon.

i'm honored and privileged to provide my testimony before you. and i commend you for holding this important hearing. i'm here today because i'm inspired by a british-educated barrister traveling on a train to with a paid ticket who was thrown off a train for sitting in first class compartment because of color of his skin. the sense of justice and outrage within him inspired a struggle for civil rights in south africa, which he later transformed for a fight for international independence from a colonial power. i'm referring to gandhi. i'm not comparing myself to gandhi, but i'm prepare to the stand up to fight for the cause that transcends cultures and nations. i'm here today because my little boy who i love dearly isn't with

me, and he has been robbed of his father's love and presence for over three years. he is another victim of a crime that was not perpetrated by a stranger, but by his own parent. it was a calculated malicious act to inflict pain on me without any regard to rights. i'm also here because nikita's father, indira's mother, albert and alfred's mother, and dozens of parents whose children have been abducted to india, are hoping that i have the courage to give an honest and accurate assessment of how their lives have been devastated, not only by the abducting parents, but by civilized nation states who have shown a blind eye to the immense human suffering that we have experienced for years.

parental child abduction is about our children. these are precious human lives, and they matter to me, to rudeina, toris, jeffrey, bindu. mehead, george, eric, marla, kevin, david, nora, melissa and the list goes on. our governments have failed to rise above their economic, security and other geopolitical interests to solve what is a solvable problem. if one of the objectives of this hearing is to scrutinize the records of japan, india, tunisia and other countries with longstanding abductions, then i humbly request, chairman smith, that we add one more name. and that is the united states. why the u.s., you ask? simply put, cases like mine have been lingering for years without any sign of progress. and you don't need to know the innerworkings of our government to learn why that is the case.

the department of state's website which is included in exhibit c of my testimony, lists parental child abduction at the bottom of the section under youth and education. items listed about it include ofs of overseas schools. exchange programs. the youth exchange programs, student career. how much confidence does that give victims of parental child abduction, when on one hand, the office of children's issues publicly state that they care about our children and are doing everything they can do bring children home, yet, the facts show a different picture? how long can parents like me have to wait even for a glimmer of hope. let's look elsewhere in our government where the department of justice whose mission is to enforce law and defend the interests of the united states,

according to the law. to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic. to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime. to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all americans. has the department of justice lived up to its mission? how many parental child abduction cases have they prosecuted in the last decade? how many cases have they closed without children returning? how many offenders have they successfully prosecuted? the answers are hard to find. so here i am today presenting a victim's report card, to rate our experience in terms of how a nation has acted to protect our children's rights and cooperated in their return, using a rating scale that my son will understand.

really bad, not good, okay, good, and awesome. i would rate our experience in the united states as not good. and in india, unfortunately, it's really bad. it doesn't give me any joy to see this. but after several decades of collective hardships faced by left behind by our children the dial of parental child abduction just hasn't moved. from a parents' point of view, where is the leadership? where is the urgency? left behind parents have been kicked around like a soccer ball from one agency to the next, one government agency to another. one representative office to another, by chance, if they're a left behind parent like david goldman, melissa or david, we hit the repeat button and do this all over again. his son was abducted in 1990 from california, when his son was only 6 months old. the abducting parent do everything they could to alienate him from his father. today, he's had no contact with his son, spent his entire life savings, sacrificed his career to seek justice which continues to elude him. this must change. time to act was yesterday. parents all over the country and around the world are outraged by the ground reality and the mediocre response.

at best, to address the real human tragedy. for too long, the voices of children have been left behind. children -- voices of children and left-behind parents have been ignored as silence. if i don't stand up today and speak about injustices, he'll have one less role model to look up to. while i support a strong ongoing strategic partnership between our country and india, based on the foundation of shared values, including family values, it must not come at the expense of american children and families. as we enhance engagement with india, more and more people establish social and our bonds. many of these relationships will lead to class-international marriages for all practical purposes if the united states and india don't establish a strong framework including considering alternatives like bilateral agreements or executive orders on the issue of parental child abduction, this will lead to exponential growth in child abduction cases and lead to a human rights disaster that will jeopardize our children's future. policymakers need to think beyond and finalize with family matters to reflect realities.

i respectful urge all members of congress, especially in the india caucus to use this opportunity to bridge the divide and create a foundation for human welfare and prosperity. it's time to take individual and collective ownership, and bring accountability, wherever it is lacking. we're all aware of india's positive contributions to the world. we know as a rising power it has the aspirations to rule the world. growth, protection of human rights, without taking stock of his own realities, the fact forward will not lead to achieving those goals. i wish we could say the only challenge we face in indiana is the judiciary. despite the abducted and left behind parents consistently get the justice in india. unfortunately, neither of those statements are true. while i've seen recent progress as instances of divorce and custody battles have increased within india, the fact of the matter is those decisions are too few and far between. indian courts are using outdated laws, or worst no laws in the case of parental abduction, to address the issues of modern globalized rule. in case of -- in a recent case, in the supreme court of india, the court ordered the return of two british citizen children abducted from the uk, predicated on the left behind parent meeting a whole slew of criteria. it was plainly clear, that even when the abducted children, in extremely rather than instances are returned to their home countries, often with

significant reconditions on the left behind parent which in effect penalizes the victims and divorces the abductor. based on direct experiences, and the ground realities in india, even in 2015, left-behind parents, completely stacked up -- sorry -- the ground realities in india, even in 2015 are completely stacked up behind the left-behind parents. we hope leaders in india would pay heed to the following observations, not because america is demanding or asking for any favors but her own citizens deserve better. the lack of policy and law recognizing parental child abduction as a crime both civil and penal have significant ramifications to citizens but those around the world who have some sort of association with india including cross-country ties, marriages of indian citizens or people of indian origin. indian courts are competent to decide on child abduction cases based on existing laws through the access, and/or indian laws addressing child abduction is leading to confusion, inconsistent criticism. the inconsistent at times, incorrect application of criteria for domicile within indian divorce law on foreign citizens, foreign investments of other countries is resulting in jurisdiction by indian courts raising serious questions of application of indian law and confusing u.s. protection rights and guarantee of each of us living in the u.s. does a cocktail of issues combined with the lack of joint custody positions, gender bias, domestic violence laws,

nonoffenses like the indian penal code 498-a are routinely invoked by abductors. give a parent of indian origin around the united states and the world for india to become the preferred location for child abductions. >> if you could just stand down briefly. >> sure. >> we have two votes on the

floor. we'll have about ten minutes if you could pick up where you are right now. i apologize.

>> this is leading to confusion and precious resources for our country that has over 31 million pending cases as of september 2014. the inconsistent at times incorrect application of criteria for doom sil within inldian divorce law such as the hindu manage act on foreign citizens permanent residents of other countries and ex-patriots is resulting in wrongful assertion of jurisdiction by inldian courts raising serious questions of extra territorial application of indian law and impithing rights and those of us living in the u.s. the cocktail of issues with

gender provision ands laws, nonavailable offenses like the indian penal code are routinely invoked by abductors and get abundant incentives to parents of indian orginal and cross the united states and world for india to become their preferred destination for child abductions. >> if you could just suspend briefly. we have two votes on the floor. i'll be back and hopefully with some other members in ten minutes. pick up right where you are now and then we'll go to mr. finldly. apologize. we'll stand in very brief recess and then resume. >> sure. as you just heard, this

house hearing on international child abduction taking a short break, about ten minutes, so that members can vote on the house floor. >> i will probably take no more than two more minutes. the issue of domicile and jurisdiction post the greatest risks for american children and families who have made conscious decision to permanently settle in the united states and yet find themselves being dragged into indian courts due to issues described about. in my own case, we are hindu americans permanently residing in the united states and re sans was born in new jersey. my ex-wife and i are both u.s. citizens and i've lived in the country for 21 years. re ang lived here until he was wrongly removed and left to india. she absconded from new jersey.

and it is evident to any reasonable person that neither i nor my ex-wife were domicile in india and therefore hindu would not apply to us and yet three courts reached a complete opposite decision. i urge this committee to take special note of the broad and subjective interpretation and application of family law which is being applied in extra territorial manner by indian courts to foreign nationals and knob residents as cause of concern as rights and protection of the constitution of the united states are being impinged upon. the hague convention has been in place for 30 years. how much more years will it take before we see american children being returned from countries like brazil, india and japan,

who have failed to recognize parental child abduction as a crime or disregarded international law and their own treaty obligations. we are not demanding special favors from our government but when parents are being left behind twice, once by their abductor and then by our own government, to fight a state machinery in another country without drukt and sustained u.s. government intervention, it is no coincidence that for every sean goldman there are hundreds reage parmar. the courage across our government to address this human tragedy is baffling. it is troubling to see the same state actor repeat their bad behavior continue because we are too who begs the question who will be the beneficiaries if our

children don't return. in conclusion -- sorry, before that, i have a few recommendations that i have submitted in exhibits e. and f. and i would like this committee to kindly consider those. i will not go into the details right now. but in conclusion, on a positive note, earlier this month the u.s. attorney for northern district of illinois indicted a father for international parental kidnapping of three children traveling with them to turkey on route to pakistan without their mother's consent permission or knowledge. he left on may 2nd and was arrested on may 6th at o'hare airport on arrival as a result of swift and coordinated actions on part of the turkish airports and law enforcement agency. all three children are now safely in the united states.

we urge our government to deliver the same kind of justice for our children who are victims of this terrible crime, including albert, alfred,ar chard, kif car, re ang, nicki, abdullah, sean, trisha, and dozens if not hundreds of other american children currently in india. will conclude with what david goldman stated in his testimony before this committee in may 2013. these cases typically drag on for months which soon turn into years as the abductor creates a home feel advantage with tactics in the home kurn's legal system. this is the norm, not the exemption. these are abduction cases and laws have been broken. these cases are not custody disputes. and let's not forget that some believe we are asking for our government to intervene in custody disputes.

we are not. all we are asking is that when our children are kidnapped to thwart a proper resolution of custody, law governing their return to our country is upheld. when it comes to international law that deals with children abducted from the united states and other lands, there is no rule of law and the broken lives and spirits of left behind patients across america whom we represent here today stand as a living rebuke to that failure to enforce the rule of law. the plain fact is that a nations refuse to return american children pay to price for defying the law and unless we arm the state department with the tools they need to do their job and unless nations who break the law flagrantly and repeatedly suffer real consequences nothing will change. nothing will change.

after over two years, those words still hold true, the department of state now has the tools in the goldman act to use them urgently and effectively to bring our children back. we are asking for action, we are asking that you bring our kids home. thank you chairman smith. >> thank you so much for your testimony and very extensive list of recommendations, including for aiders and abetters of child abduction. i think all of your testimony is brilliant and i think you for those specific recommendations. mr. findlay. >> thank you chairman smith and distinguish members of the sub-committee. i'm pleased to be here on behalf of the missing and exploited children. i would like to thank you mr. chairman and other members on behalf of the families impacted by the terrible crime of

international abduction. the act provided family and supporters with additional tools to bring their children home and i'm sure it will be implemented in the planner in which congress intended. as you are aware, for years nick machas focused on international child abduction. working with the state department and law enforcement agencies to assist the impacted parents and families. today in our distinct role as a nonprofit nongovernmental organization we continue to work with families as we have with each of the parents even today to apply our experience networks and resources to help them locate and recover their children. you've heard today clearly that significant challenges remain.

there are still several countries including japan, india and tunisia among others in which there are delays and a lack of any real progress toward u.s. children. for one example, india represents the individual nonhague country with the highest number of nick mac's own statistics and reflect the same reality facing the individual parents who have shared their powerful stories today. nick macis assisting families in 53 total child abduction cases and of those cases, 51 have been open for longer than one year and in nearly half of those cases the parent has been seeking the return of their child for more than five years. when that much time has passed that a child is separated from their parent, no terms are adequate to describe that situation. it is much more appropriate to describe it as heartbreaking. this is not comfort blg information. but every single statement we have heard today demonstrates that information is important. the annual compliance report has long served as the only comprehensive source of information to evaluate the person formance of countries in the metric, how many and how often are abducting u.s. children reporting. the compliance report is a tool. it is a tool that nick mac and i utilize every day to educate professionals. for those that are concerned an abduction might occur it is utilized to associate the risk and directly relied upon by families, attorneys, courts, law enforcement agencies and others to support their ep efforts in implementing safeguards to make

shire a child is not wrong my removed from the united states in the first place. the question that is always posed by each interested party is what can i expect and the compliance report helps to fill in that answer. for those families that have already experienced a tragedy, the report is a tool to inform parents of the challenges they might be facing and what realistic avenues are available for recovering their child. among the common questions asked by parents is what can i do and again the compliance report has helped in some small part to fill in that answer. as you've heard there are numerous concerns about the breath of information contained in the state department's first compliance report issued under the requirements of the goldman

act and whether or not it contained sufficient details to continue serving as a useful tool for the answers of parents. because it is a information clearing house we uniquely appreciate the importance of details when a child has been lost. mr. chairman and other members i thank you with the chance to share with you to ensure the most useful and complete information is always available and most importantly to help you implement better solutions. my hope and anticipation is that each compliance report continues to expand on existing knowledge and use as a more useful tool than the last report. i'm happy to answer any questions about nick mac's programs or role and any information similar to the statistics to the sub-committee and anything i can answer to assist with your work and i thank each parent and i tib with your on going support for these families to continue to bring their children home. >> thank you mr. findlay. and i want to thank you and the

national children for missing and exploited children. the senate finally had the bill on the floor which i introduced five years ago and on the fifth anniversary of the introduction of the bill into the house that they finally got to vote on it. but nick mcwas very involved and your letters of support and endorsement were key because many members were unaware and there were balls in the air and people are multi-tasking every day of the week here and it helped to pierce through and say oh, they are there for this and what does the bill do and so thank you for that very, very important and pivotal support that you provided as well as the work that you do on behalf of the families and the families on behalf of themselves and for each of those who have testified, what you do for all of the others. i've been so encouraged and deeply impressed and -- how you never just fight for your own child, you reach out -- or

children and try to help others who are similarly hurt by the abduction or by abduction so thank you for that leadership as well. and i hope the american public, we are grateful that c-span decided -- because they get to pick, they have editorial judgment merit their coverage and they decided to come and hear you and the administration speak to this issue so we are grateful they are now able to take that message throughout the entire country so that people will know the agony that you face and the frustrations that you face as well. let me just ask mrs. barbirou and i know you support others that are left behind, could you tell the sub-committee, with some detail, if you would, what it is like to wake up every morning knowing that your child has been abducted, not knowing what is happening during the

course of the day? all of you might want to speak to that. as a father of four and grandfather of four children, i can't begin to sense how traumatizing that has to be on a daily basis year and year out. and the commander is here, his daughter abducted when he was deployed to yokohama and his wife has passed -- or the mother of his child and he can't even get his own child back. as you mentioned, dr. savoie, in your testimony, his case. the agony. if you could speak to the pain it imposes upon you, it would be helpful for the sub-committee to get that sense. >> thank you, chairman. i don't know that you can verbalize the pain.

i can say that it is something you have to work through. it is devastating every day to -- as you said, you can't imagine it. and even if it is happening to you, you can't imagine it. it is a nightmare that continues to go on. for me, i'm grateful that i do have my daughter with me and through her i am able to witness a piece of my son on a daily basis. and that is a tremendous blessing that i am firmly aware that so many other parents do not have the gift of. and for them, i can -- i is say for each of us, our cases are different, our circumstances differ, but we can feel each other's pain and feel each other's tragedy. i sat here and spoke with mr. savoie and i want to cry for him. and it is not something that i feel i can personally put into words but just ask you to try to imagine. and knowing that you can't ever get to the point of understanding that depth of devastation, realize that it is

equally difficult to put into words. >> all i can do is really echo those same statements, that there are really no words for this kind of pain, this kind of trauma. daily, hourly. every time you see a child in a supermarket, it reminds you. and i'm also a stepfather as well. and i have step children. and every time i go to a sporting event or hug my step children, i'm reminded that i'm not able to give that same love and care to my own biological children. and i think all of us feel that way. we're constantly reminded that we're parents. you don't lose that. it is a lie dodge cal imperative. it is part of our fabric. part of the fabric of our being. and that love is being denied. and then you start feeling the

empathetic pain for the child. that is the other thing. as a parent, you don't think i'm being denied something, and that is true, we are. we are victims. we are crime victims. but our children had no choice in this matter whatsoever. and you empathize with them. all of the hugs they are missing and the sports events they could have and the opportunity to speak your native language with them. all of that gone. and it would be great if at some point we could find a justice system that would give us back that time. but the truth is, congress cannot give us back that time, the u.s. government cannot give us back that time, god himself cannot give us back time with our children. it is gone forever. and so we're left with the -- the pain and the suffering and the parents here and many of

these parents have chosen maybe as a bit of therapy to give back and help prevent these things from happening to other people and to work together to help return these children in some measure and not lose more time. >> chairman, i 100% agree with what was just said. again, i'm just reminding, this is a human problem. this is lives that we're talking about. if we just focus on that, and try to decouple it with law and diplomacy and everything else, the geopolitical power games and everything else, then we can solve it, as long as this stuff is out there in terms of democratic stuff, then we are really missing the point. >> mr. findlay, in the testimony just a few moments ago, miss christensen said the new law is ebb couraging more countries to consider -- to become part of the convention if they are already not part of the copvention. is the law making a difference,

in your opinion. and i say this as a source of encouragement. and if we get the report right and if we get it right on japan. it is egregious, it is a and if we get it right on japan. it is egregious, it is a whitewash and i can't think of words to describe it and if you recall earlier from testimony from our friends from the administration, i did ask that they go look at it and reissue portions of where they got it wrong and there is nothing wrong with the definition of unresolved abduction case, which is why i read the definition from the text to make it clear and they have misread that clearly somehow and as i said earlier and before you answer, i am concerned again at a previous hearing when ambassador jacobs

said i don't think we're going to sanction japan or threaten them with sanctions because you -- i think that would be detrimental relationship detrimental to our bilateral relationship. a relationship needs to be based on trust, based on honesty, clarity and not putting uncomfortable truths under the table this -- this egregious wound that it does to your children as well as to left-behind parents of parental child abduction. so shame on us if we do not look them straight in the eye -- this has to improve and this is a very serious issue between our two countries because we care about the kids, the abducted children and we care about the left behind parents. so mr. findlay. >> thank you, chairman smith. i think as you've stated and i've reiterated several times in my testimony, i saw the sean and

david goldman act as a tool of recovery and also of prevention and some of the promising differences i've seen since the time it has been enacted are slow steps toward improving our nation's response to preventing an abduction occurring in the first place. i've indicated that the information the national center submitted in our written statement regarding the active cases to japan where 50 out of 54 active cases have been ongoing for longer than a year. 20 out of 22 active cases to brazil have been going on longer than a year. 51 out of 53 to india have been going on longer than a year and all six of the cases we're currently working on in the country of tunisia have been active for longer than one year. that is not comforting information. we're happy and pleased with the opportunity to present that kind of information and to give that

perspective and picture to other parents and to the committee to try to get a perspective on whether or not the countries are complying. but that remains a depressing picture and that remains a depressing picture in the months since the goldman act has been passed and so i'm hopeful and optimistic but the active cases remain the way they are. >> as you all know, the next shoe to drop will be on the sanctions portion, vis-a-vis the 22 nations, which ought to be 23, japan has to be on that list and there are serious repercussions which i hope the administration will use as that tool box and we will hopefully hear from ambassador jacobs in july as to how that is going so we don't get a designation without commensurate sanctions so the countries know we mean business. there are two areas i worked on closely and trafficking and

international religious freedom and very often we have seen a lack of enforcement of sanctions when it comes to other human rights abuses, so this is hopefully an opening for the administration to say if you use the toolbox right and say we mean business, sanctions will be deployed, and the quickest way to get those lifted is to obviously resolve the cases in a way and return is the ultimate resolution of the case. let me just ask you, finally, to what extent any of you might want to speak to you, do you believe that corruption abroad, mr. findlay, you might want to speak to this in terms of judicial system and judges and a foreign ministry that might be susceptible to corruption and we know it is a huge problem in many countries and even here in the united states. what would you say to that? has that caused some of this?

>> i will, to some extent, i'll try to answer your question. i would defer on the realities that individual parents have faced and the frustrations they have faced in their own cases to the parents who have lived it so i wouldn't presume to speak to each individual situation. i will say as to it relates to this hearing one. most useful pieces of information contained in compliance reports has been detailed descriptions of the performance problems in countries that are concern for noncompliance, when there were concerns about judicial performance, there was significant detail provided for a country that has not been spoken about today, but such as costa rica where there were in past compliance reports of detailed descriptions of the problems that the united states noticed in the application of the treaty principles in their courts when considering hague convention cases.

they remain noted i believe in the current report as do numerous other countries however to some extent the detail and the level of depth as to what led to the designations was not in the report. and as i look at this tool to educate and to make everyone aware of existing problems and how to prevent this, it is important that the level of depth and details remains. >> i think your point is extremely well taken. on page 30 of the report it has countries demonstrating patterns of noncooperation and there is an a, b, c, d. e. and with judicial performance law enforcement performance, and persistent failure of convention countries to work with the united states, and reduction cases and then you turn to the

next page where it has the 22 countries it has to brazil, a, krx, d-e india e, and so that level of reporting needs to be -- is a point very well taken and break out so that they know and so there is real transparency as to what is the depth of the problem. more is more here and we need more. you have to keep referring back to say what is e. it shouldn't be that way. thank you for that. that is a good insight. would any of you like -- yes. >> i think in japan, i would not describe it as corruption, i would just say that there is -- the fix is in. the law just doesn't allow for this to happen. and the courts aren't changing it. there is a problem with following rule of law even with japan itself. >> i think what you pointed out, een the chief -- even the chief justice of the supreme court in japan, we need to become a tail wind behind the reformers in japan so -- >> absolutely. >> so if we put a zero for unresolved cases, who are we really helping there?

one, it is inaccurate and second it is not helping the reformers. >> and we are taking the wind out of their sails. and when the chief justice is saying that, he was talking to his judges and say you have to get with it and follow the laws. there are laws that can be used on the books in japan and the lawmakers have put things in there like article 756 has been reformed to help the situations and the parent rights thing haven't changed but the courts themselves are not cooperating and when you have this intrinsic assay and this is not technically corruption but it is an official problem that we have. and by calling out japan with its problems for what it is and saying to our friend, our friends ore there, look, you

have a problem with your system, it is violating human rights, let's not do that. i don't think we're hurting japan, we're helping japan. and we're helping japanese children at the same time who deserve those same human rights. >> thank you for the question. and i think i would echo that statement that i'm not sure it would be corruption, as the descriptive word i would use. but there is certainly an issue in tunisia with the rule of law. where you have a tunisia president visiting with u.s. senators and declaring to them that there is no final judgment in an abduction case where the supreme court of tunisia has made a ruling declaring that the home of residence is the united states and the best interest is served there, to repeatedly through various members of their administration, up through the

newly elected president to respond to any request by our government officials to say there isn't a final judgment, it is absurd. what is your rule of law? you've just instilled a new constitution that directly upholds your supreme court and it's -- and its rulings and you turn around in the face of those and say, well, we don't have a ruling, we don't have a final judgment. well if your supreme court is not the final judgment then what is? and i do applaud the tunisia judiciary for following the international law and upholding its legal obligations in the face of what is very obviously an interest of society to protect its citizen because they see my children as tunisia and they do not see them as individuals and they do not see them as children who deserve the

familihood of both a mother and a father, they see them as symbols of their national -- of -- as national symbols. my children are tunisia and american as well and the home is the united states and the tunisia courts have ruled, and the american courts have ruled and it is simply time that those judgments be enforced. and i don't know if you call that corruption, i certainly call it a problem. >> gentlemen, i think there is a lot of commonalities that it is hard for us to define whether we face corruption or not. but for example, laws that have no clear guidelines, so that from one judge to the next, under the same set of circumstances, you'll get different rulings.

the fact that even after, for example, in india, there is a progressive thought in the law commission, in 2006, one of the reports that said india should accede to hague to that joint custody is allowed. fortunately on the latter there has been some movement within the indian parliament and they have placed a rule change. it still will probably take some years to implement. but the main challenge we face is both cultural and attitude approach to that. i think -- so it might not be an overt sort of decision to harm somebody, but it is the lack of or the ignorance in the issue is probably what is hurting us. >> let me -- if you have anything else you would like to say, i would like to give you the last word or we'll just conclude. but the trafficking victim

protection act report which requires this math moth -- mammoth study country by country, mr. findlay, which you know, which breaks out protecting sex and trafficking and every country has a monologue and a box of recommendations and then there is a tier system, one, two, three and watch list and if you are a tier three country you are an egregious violator in human trafficking and you get sanctioned. this didn't start out as this thick book but it quickly became that and data calls out to the embassies and the goldman act and we want somebody in every embassy working this issue where it's their portfolio. we want a seriousness of implementation for you and for your kids and my hope is that again, correcting the deficiencies currently, and

right now, we'll appeal to secretary kerry who i think is a reasonable man and he'll hear that appeal and hopefully take it to heart and make sure in japan and india where there are no unresolve cases, and according to this, we have two from both of those countries sitting right here, we'll look to fix it and to get it right for accuracy. and again for the courts, and mr. findlay, you might want to speak to this, and how important it is before judges that this report be correct so that they make informed decisions about the vulnerabilities of someone perhaps going abroad with their kid, with their child. >> i'm happy to speak to that, mr. chairman. just yesterday, wednesday of this week, i was on the phone and speaking to a family court in the state of washington and to the litigants and the attorneys involved in that case and describing and answering questions related to the risks of abduction to a particular country, not one spoken about or represented today but the

resource aside from the information, the limited information that our center obtains from cases reported only to us, but aside from the information we have firsthand, the next and the most important and most comprehensive source i have to point to is the information that comes from the u.s. state department and i value that information and i value the completeness of that information and i do know there are 14 states plus the district of columbia that have adopted uniform child abduction prevention laws in the family law systems that encourage or require family judges to receive information about whether or not a country is a signatory and more importantly whether or not they are living up to the treaty and whether or not what it means to live up to that treaty and to address living and safeguards and our center knows firsthand there are interested parties and

government entities and parents and attorneys and advocates and agencies who are desperate for this information and would love as much information as can be provided. we do our best to provide what limited info we can and share that with the sub-committee but that is where i'll leave it, is that information is important. whether or not it is comforting and paints a happy picture, it is still important. >> actually yesterday i had an individual contact me about the report and knew that i was testifying here today and he wanted me to mention his case which is very much on point. he -- prior to japan signing the hague had been granted sole custody of his children with supervised visitation because there was a threat of an abduction and now that japan has signed the hague, the other side is now petitioning to have that supervised visitation removed in

court. under the premise that japan is now a hague country and is complaint and therefore we don't have to worry about this any more. and very much to that point, if this report is not accurate and says zero, zero, zero, no problem, those children may well be abducted. they may well be abducted and may well be abducted with the judge's permission, because he or she will rely on this report saying that zero, there is no problem. and 90 days is actually not enough time to correct that for this individual. the other side can present this report as evidence with an expert witness in that court and put it on the record and now claim that japan has a flawless record in this area when we all know that is not the case. so it is a very real concern and created a very real concern for this particular individual in texas right now who is worried

that this report may have given the other side, who may have nefarious intentions, the ability now to legally abduct these kids right out from under us. >> that is already the case in the report from tunisia where there is zero abduction -- unresolved cases. did you want to speak to that? >> i just -- you offered to have a closing statement so i'm going to take you up on that offer, chairman, and thank you for that opportunity. i just wanted to reiterate that miss christensen in her testimony asserted that the mission of oci is to assist children and families involved in ipca and to prevent its occurrence. it's a simple mission. that does not mention recovery. but my assumption is the assistance to children and families involved in ipca means they are offering the

assistance for recovery and yet all i heard in their testimony and all that i see through the compliance report is an interest in prevention. and i stated in my testimony but want to restate that the convention is a powerful tool but it is not a tool that will result in the return of our already abducted children. and while i advocate strongly for its use in future cases, i wish for it to be made crist -- crystal clear in the record that as it is written is a fair and powerful law with strong remedies if applied will result in the return of our illegally abducted children abroad. and as a request to this committee would ask that in the future you ensure that it is implemented in the spirit in which it was created and if necessary it be updated with an

explicit requirement of accountability for the total existing cases by country including newly reported cases and the total number of children involved in each case represented in future reports by states to congress because our children count, and they must be counted. it is so important that state understands they represent individuals and they must count. thank you. >> just, i will end on a couple of items from the recommendations that i had. i think forward, while we're talking about the report, since 30 years, hague convention has been in place, but we haven't had a consolidation of data sources. so department of state should expand and enhance the data gathering and tracking of government cases by leveraging

sources such as the u.s. family courts, police department reports, the amce, and the fbi and other sources to have a more consolidated sources instead of waiting for the parent to report the case. one of the other recommendations i would like to highlight is in returning the children especially to the top destinations, department of state should consider deploying a permanent attache at the u.s. commission who will insure that the pending cases are being worked on in a fair and quick manner. so the children actually come home, that is the bottom line. and the third request i have is with you and the rest of congress, is to really take the leadership on this and make it a win-win situation for both the u.s. and india and really engage with them on this issue just

like you would engage with them on any other strategic and economic issue. if you make it important, i'm sure it will be important for them as well. >> if i would just put on the congressional record one last request just to be able to say that i love my children isaac and rebecca and i will never stop fighting for the ability to be involved in their lives. and i look forward to the day that all of us can be reunited with them, with our children. and i thank you for all of your support if trying to make that -- in trying to make that happen. >> thank you dr. savoie and thank you all for your extraordinarily compelling testimony. and i can assure you that this subcommittee will be unceasing in my efforts. and as you know i learned the

sufficiently and the gaps in what you face on a day to day basis through david goldman's case, very good welfare, whereabouts but not much when it came to policy and trying to effectuate the return of sean, his son. and from that ordeal, i learned through him and through his son and now through all of you just how agonizing it is and that is why we wrote the law and be tenacious in making sure it is faithfully implemented. you are heroes and i thank you for your leadership and mr. findlay thank you for the work you do. it is irreplaceable. the hearing is adjourned. >> some are sitting kind of front left of the chamber, if

you will and so when brooks comes into the chamber he comes into the center doors sits down, is almost looking directly at sumner. the problem is sumner is not looking at him. sumner's head is bowed. he is literally signing copies of the crime against kansas speech. prestonburg gets up walks down the center aisle with his cane. approaches sumner. totally oblivious. brooks reached him lifts his cane over his head and said mr. sumner i have read your speech over twice, it is a liable to my state and my relative. sumner looks up at this point. brooks is blurred through his glasses because he's so close and brooks strikes sumner on the top of the head with a cane. his head explodes in blood almost instantly. >> author stephen puleo on the

caning of prestonburg to sumner. sunday night on c span's q & a. when congress is in session, c span 3 brings you more of the best access of congress with live coverage of hearings, news conferences, and key public affairs events and every weekend it's american history tv, traveling to historic sites discussions with authors historyians and eyewitness accounts of events that define the nation. c span 3. the brennan center for justice recently held a similar pose yuls on intelligence oversight. former vice president walter mondale talks about his forays into the intelligence committee.

there were also panel discussions on current oversight of the intelligence agencies and what lies ahead. among the speakers were a number of former congressional staffers. this is about three hours 15 minutes. we have two incredible panelists. i know that we covered a lot of the congressional oversight issues with vice president mondale and senator hart and rich schwartz, so on this one we're going to try to go a little bit more in depth on some nuts and bolts and how things can work and how they can be improved. my first panelist is dr. loch johnson who is a committee staffer and is now a professor of public and international affairs at the university of georgia, he served as a special assistant to frank church during the church committee investigation and later the

staff director to the house intelligence oversight subcommittee in the first house and the budget committee set up after the church committee. he's had a career in both other staff jobs on the hill and was also the staff director of the as present- -- aspen brown commission on the role and then capabilities of the intelligence community in 1996. >> you can also say he's written the book on intelligence, that would be wrong he's actually written books on belings intelligence more than a dozen of them. we also have diane roarke. she spent 17 years as a republican staff member to the house, permanent select committee on intelligence, where she stayed until she retired in 2002 and many of us probably

would not know her name but for a "new york times" article in 2005 that revealed the warrantless wire tapping program that president bush had authorized after 9/11. diane was targeted with a very aggressive fbi investigation and threats of prosecution that i'll let her get into more of the details with. but loch why don't we start sort of from a higher level. some of targeted that national security and foreign policy are the domain of the executive and congress should let the executive have free rein in those areas. what's the role in those activities and how is it performed in that role? >> thank you, mike. this is a complex topic and i approach with a great deal of humility and some of my former colleagues on the church committee remind me from time to

time that the humility is well deserved. i would again by pointing out that we have pictures in our head, i think, of how government out to work. some people have a picture in their head that indicates power is most important and efficiency. one thinks of former vice president cheney for example or the u.c. law professor john yu. they believed when it comes to national security the president should be the sole organ of the government. i much prefer and i think many of our panelists do that the model projected at our founding fathers convention which is often called the madisonian model which believes that there is a higher value and that higher value has to do with preventing auto accuracy from taking over a country. so if you read frals paper number 51, which most of us have, i think it's a primer on

how the government should work when it comes to accountability. when you walk into the eponymous library of congress wing you'll find a quote from him in which he says power lodged as it must be in human hands is ever liable to abuse, and that's what animated the founding fathers of 1777. they were anti power oriented. they understood the danger of power. today, i think most of people who study this carefully have adopted the madisonian model, although certainly we know there are those out there who believe in the imperial or unit i tarry presidency model, but those who adopt the madisonian model point out that the reason we need accountability, it's not enough

to just pass laws congress has an obligation to make sure those laws to be carried out properly. lee hamilton said accountability is all about keeping the bureaucrats on their toes. someone from my state said accountability is all about keeping the bureaucrats from doing something stupid, and there are a couple of ways of doing that. one can review programs which has a kind of ex-post fact toe aspect to it. i like to point out thattante post facto is important too. i think -- i'll wrap this up quickly -- i think the pattern over the years since the church committee has been highly uneven. i discern this pattern when it comes to intelligence accountability, and i use the metaphor from political science about police patrolling and

firefighting, by police patrolling, i mean lawmakers checking the locks on the door, shining the flash lights into these agencies, you know morning what they are doing on a regular basis, by firefighting, i mean when things really go wrong, when there's a train wreck and members of congress have to jump on the fire truck and go to the rescue and put out the fire, and what i see being the pattern is rather desultory policing by the congress most of the time. a lot better than the church committee. the difference is night and day, but still not as energetic as one would like until there's a shock to the system, by that a mean a scandal of some kind iran-contrafor instance or a terrible intelligence failure such as what preceded the 9/11 events. when you have a shock the lawmakers become very energetic,

they jump on the fire trucks they conduct an investigation. this has happened five times. it happen with the church committee, with the iran-contrascandal, it happened with the 9/11 mistakes that occurred and it happened with the wrong hypothesis about wmds in iraq. what concerns me is what happens in between these fires and how we can avoid the fires in the first place and what that points to is the need for more energetic police patrolling and the only time we really have energetic police patrolling is right after the firefighting and members are aware of the importance of accountability, but then it begins to ebb away and you go back to again low-level, low energy police patrolling, until guess what happens? exactly what madison would have predicted. these agencies abuse their power. they make major mistakes or they

are engaged in a scandal and then we have what i would call more genuine accountability. one of big questions i think we need to address is how we can sustain this police patrolling in order to avoid the fires that eventually break out. >> diane you came over -- you spent some years on the executive branch and came over to the intelligence committee. how did you see your role when you changed from being in the community to being an overseer of the community? >> well, i have to say that anybody who says with a straight face that the executive branch is extremely efficient and streamlined has never served there or is not being honest. my main two issues, for instance, while i was at the national security council staff were verifying compliance with arms control agreements and some counterintelligence issues related to diplomatic

reciprocity with the soviet union at the time. the bureaucracy -- the story of my career basically both in the administration and in the legislative branch is a struggle with bureaucracy. they basically do not want any oversight from anybody including in the executive office of the president, and they certainly don't want it from the intelligence branch -- i mean from the legislative branch either, and it's much easier for them to put off the legislative branch, but we do believe as loch said in separation of powers. it is fundamental and the founders did not say that foreign policy was exempt. i mean they gave commander in chief powers because in a fast-moving war you can't be going to get approval for every tactical or other move from congress but they didn't exempt foreign policy in generally.

i have to say -- i came to the legislative branch determined to do significant oversight as i had been in the executive branch and it was tough in both places, but tougher in the legislative side. i mean i was known as a pretty aggressive oversight for pretty aggressive oversight once the republicans came in power i had the inner row account first and insisted they should compete their contracts, for instance. questioned the way they were going in a number of areas. this was very unpopular both with the nro and with the contractors. then i was assigned to nsa. bh i came to the nsa account, the general perception was that it was in good shape. after about three months i was totally depressed. i thought the national security was at risk because they were --

they had not even begun to adapt to the digital age and had no real plans to do so. >> this was 1998? '97? >> 1997. that was when the telecommunications industry was changing extremely rapidly. communications security also becoming an issue at that time. and both those are nsa accounts. so i was really worried. i was extremely worried at the lack of urgency and they also -- what became even more important, a cultural problem at the nsa. i focused not on operations, which most people had done. i focused on development, and engineering, and there was a considerable lack of engineering discipline. they were not used to building big integrated systems anymore. they were one-off little

garage-type projects, you know. we had a very scletoric enemy, previously. the soviet union didn't change its telecommunications much. >> neither did the fbi where i was working at the time. >> this is the irony. if i actually got some money for fbi for some of their technical kanls that were later used against me. anyway -- the other big issue to me was the complete lack of objectivity in evaluating various approaches, technical approaches to modernize and these became enormous issues. >> how did your oversight work? did you go to the nsa? did you go to members to go to the nsa? how was your interaction with the agency in trying to get them to understand the problem and trying to get the members to understand the problem? >> well i was always at the

nsa, i would say at least once a week or often more or they were down -- these are briefings upon preefgs upon briefings and they are very technical. i hadn't had the nsa account before, so there was a lot to learn.i hadn't had the nsa account before, so there was a lot to learn. what i learned and i became very kerpd i said within a few months, nothing was connected. everybody was off doing their own little tiny projects and so on, andconcerned i said within a few months, nothing was connected. everybody was off doing their own little tiny projects and so on, and and other staff became concerned also so in this respect, at least, both the democrats and republican staff were on the same page and we both began telling our members and especially our ranking members about this quickly. >> and how was it received? >> i think one of the issues is staff -- you have to look at -- staff can have an awful lot of

power. they were willing to go along with me with many marks as long as they weren't too ambitious. as long as they didn't cut major programs, and they were willing to let me put in really tough language into some of the reports, especially the classified reports which did not embarrass the agency as much but by the -- i was warning frankly that their modernization program was doomed from the start. i took one look at it. when they finally came up with a proposal for modernization program, i went -- i asked them for their decision paper and they sent it to me and i read it and i called them, and i said all right, i just really want to understand this. am i correct in seeing from this paper that what you want to do is take your old analog system and modernize it into a -- to

the digital age? they said yes, yes that's absolutely correct. i said it will never work. it will never work. and i say this to i.t. people and they just shake their heads. they can't believe it. first of all, the old analog system was completely inadequate, and how you build a system that's really inadequate and take it into the digital age is just ridiculous. the only -- >> and did you have a technological background? how did you come to understand the technology? >> crash course. >> and does the committee have experts that it can rely on or do they rely on the expertise from the agency? >> the senate actually did get some technical experts on board and some auditing people that they used. some -- there is a problem with this because the real experts in this systems often tend to be from the agencies, but the problem is they, of course, have

an agency perspective often. if they want to go back to the agency, that's a big issue because they don't want to antagonize them. if they want to go out in the contractor world afterward, they also don't want to antagonize them, because -- and so there becomes -- there is sort of a -- often, maybe just in the background, go along and get along kind of attitude, and where do you get the expertise without -- >> and what are the reasons i really wanted to have you on the panel is that i think it's very important to understand these agencies aren't monolithic and there are people in the agencies trying very hard to reform them from the inside. loch, i know with intelligence oversight, you've written quite a bit about the importance of personalities and how oversight gets done and how reform gets done. >> i really think that's true and if you look at these

oversight committees you'll find that the devotion to accountability varies according to personalities. if i may refer to vice president mondale, for example, he became the hero of the church committee staff because we would give him thick briefing books and would get them back at the end of the day with notations in the margins, things under lined and that was so inspiring to be a staff member who had someone so interested and so dedicated to preparing for the next hearing. i see generally speaking four types of members of these oversight committees. the first i call the cheer leader and this is the person who has nothing but positive praise for the intelligence agencies and i personally think that a lot of that praise is warranted. after all these agencies are extremely important. they do a lot to help protect us. we couldn't do without them. we could do it without their excesses, obviously. so the cheer leaders is involved in unalloyed devotion to these

agencies, again it's not all bad because the american people need to understand why we're spend 50 to 80 billion dollars on these agencies. someone has got to explain why we have that kind of expenditure. another type is the ostrich and this is the worst type of all. this is the person with his or her head in the sand who oddly enough is on one of these committees but doesn't do anything. and to put a couple of names, if i may, to these, when i think of the ostrich, forgive me for saying so, i think of barry gold water. he voted against the creation of the senate intelligence committee to begin with and one of those quirky twists of history became chairman of that committee, and did very little until he became angry with the d.c.i. who misled him.

gold water was very unhappy about it and became energetic. to put a name of the cheer leader, there are a lot of people who could fall into that category. i would estimate 80% of the members of these intelligence committees are purely cheer leaders. porter goss might qualify or eddie bowlen, a person i worked for in the early stages. he once said to me calm down with oversight we've had a lot of trouble having good relations with the agencies. for a while, we engage in cheered leading. the fourth category is what i call the lemon sucker and i take this from bill clinton who once said is all economists are lemon sucker. what he meant is they would come into the oval office and they

would have nothing but bad news. the lemon suckers are those who see no value whatsoever in the intelligence community and i think a little of daniel patrick moynahan, he was over the top when it came to his criticism of the cia and actually wanted to close that place down if you recall. finally, here's the model that i try to espouse the guardian and this is a person who combines some skepticism that one might find in the lemon sucker category, but balanced off with some cheerleading as well, someone who strikes a balance between the two. when we're raising children, we try to compliment them and reward them with they do well but if we're good parents we'll also criticize them when they are doing things they shouldn't be doing. this is what the guardian tries to do. example of the guardian, i think mr. mondale would be one example, so would gary hart. i think of lee hamilton who played that role very well.

i think personalities matter very much and the really energetic guardians also tend to be the more energetic police patrollers which are trying to prevent the fires from breaking out. what we need on capitol hill you could fill in that blank. one of things we need on these intelligence committees is more guardians and police patrollers. >> dyan, your worse fears come true the nsa isn't prepared. 9/11 happens. what happened next? >> i retired in april of 2002, but before i retired i found out about the nsa domestic surveillance program which, of course, ichs not supposed to know about, only the four top people in congress on the intelligence committees were supposed to know about it so i immediately wrote memos and updated memos, many memos to the chairman and ranking, which was

porter goss and nancy pelosi, explaining the whole thing to them indicating where it was going, which to my mind was very serious. it was -- it became clear to me this was not a temporary thing. it was to be a permanent thing. and also indicating that it was expanding in terms of the data to be covered. it was expanding rapidly. to my horror i found out that they had already approved it. so i argued that it was illegal and unconstitutional, and that it had taken off the civil liberties protections that initially had been built into it, and that was encryption of u.s. person names until there

was probable cause and a warrant from a judge and secondly i think equally important, it was automatic tracking of all accesses to the databases and what was done with the data. obviously, this would take you know -- it would be a huge boon to oversight which is precisely, i believe, why they didn't want it, both those. and so i -- i argued that that was the absolute minimum they could do. it would still be illegal and constitutional but at least we would have some protections and i want to -- i -- when i got nowhere on the intelligence committee, i then went to other people in the executive -- or attempted to -- in the executive and judicial branches whom i knew probably were cleared into the program and i would ask them initially are you cleared into the post 9/11 nsa program and they would say yes.

they would say nothing else usually, but they would listen, and i made the same argument to them. of course, i knew it originated at the white house and this was a big problem because there was nobody who could overrule them. it went all the way to the top and therefore a lot of the avenues that you normally could take were cut off. i tried to meet with david addington who didn't return my phone call. >> he was counsel to vice president cheney. >> the one who was writing up the law for this. i had sat six feet away from him for years. so anyway nothing worked. i did everything i could including a few months into retirement, general hayden. i met with him twice. he became concerned about my constant agitation and actually called me in with the obvious

purpose of trying to shut me up, and in doing so he said i want to run this as long as i can. he said you can yell and scream and wave your arms all you want after it leaks and by the way every single person i talked to knew it would leak because it was so obviously contrary to all the training that the intelligence community had received in what they could and couldn't do. >> and particularly the nsa, there was kind of a mantra. >> nsa, they had to -- every year, they had to review the legal standards and sign off that they had reviewed them. >> and you do not spy on americans. >> right. uh-huh. >> and so you make all these extraordinary efforts, and then realize they are not -- there's not an avenue to go through. >> yeah, i basically -- you know i tried to see chief justice rehnquist because there was some hint from hayden that he hav -- that they may have

talked to him about it. i tried to see the head of the fisa court who ironically told me she could not talk to me because it might prejudice her consideration of a future case, and in retrospect she was already briefed into it and of course, prejudice issing case in which one side received anyway, my main issue to her, if she had listened to me encrypt u.s. names, the capability is there do automated tracking and give it to the court, you know, have a court review of that, i think the future -- what -- it would have given the fisa a court a lot of power and we could have

avoided a lot of this. everybody i went to listened silently and did nothing. so i retired and then myself as well as some of my come padres including tom drake who is here today, bill benny, loomis, decided at least we would try to address the abuse that became rampant at nsa. the waste of money and the killing of programs that were much more advanced and appeared to be much cheaper also. >> and more privacy protection. >> and more privacy protected, uh-huh. and so we went to the department of defense ig given that the nsa ig was not independent and it was also heavily involved in the modernization effort, and

used a hot line for protection of our reputations. tom did not sign the letter that we sent, but he helped them from the inside. he gave absolutely crucial help because nsa stonewalled what eventually became an audit that went on for two and a half years, and it was so devastating that they still put for official use only on it and all these years later it is in a black hole. >> and the program does eventually leak in 2005. tell us about the fbi's contact with you. >> well it leaked -- when it leaked i thought -- i had warn everybody it would leak and they had all agreed, and i couldn't believe how long it lasted and so i had finally decided well maybe, i was wrong and next week i open up my paper and there it was the headline, you know.

so at that point i was free to discuss my objections under the hayden guidelines but i did -- well i -- so i wrote an op-ed eventually. i became very concerned especially when the administration started stone walling the courts and trying to get the whole thing kicked out of the courts. that was basically my trigger and i wrote an op-ed on it that i passed through the guys and they said no, it's not classified, and so i -- i came back with no theme left. black marks everywhere. at that point i contacted the committee and asked them -- and they claimed that they could take out unclassified too, and i contacted the committee and asked them for my nondisclosure agreement for a copy of it and i didn't get an answer. now, one of the reasons may be

because this wasn't very flattering to the committee either. i think from that time on the committee was in league -- completely in league, it appeared to me with the fbi and the administration, but anyway, so i wrote -- so this op-ed died and then a reporter contacted me from -- a reporter from "baltimore sun" and wanted to know one of my comments on this and so i -- i told her what my objections had been and that these two safeguards should be restored. this apparently was another nail in my coffin because when the leaks occurred in 2005 in the "new york times," i was immediately targeted as the likely leaker. as i said to people, how dumb do

you think i am? this is really counterintuitive. as it was revealed in tom's sentencing hearing they never had any evidence. they pursued this investigation for five or six years with no evidence of either motive or fact. >> and actually raided your home? >> yes. they raided my home in 2007 at 6:00 a.m. in the morning at the same time they were raiding three -- bill, kirk, and ed, and later they raided tom as well and they were attempting to indict tom and/or i. they evidently decided on tom because he had been much more involved with the same "baltimore sun" reporter. both of us, by the way, gave only unclassified to the reporter and tom's were basically as said earlier in the good government kind of waste and abuse category.

>> and that investigation, you said, has gone on for five years. do you now have some idea that the investigation is no longer moving forward? >> well the other four were resolved but they deliberately left me hanging and so finally finally -- well, initially all of us sued to try to get our property back because they told us they weren't giving it back, believe it or not. you are found innocent and the nsa, one of the many powers they claim that i didn't realize before was that they can basically seize everything -- your computer. all your papers. >> and this has become some unfortunately has recurred. we saw during the torture report debate that the cia had actually made a crimes report to the department of justice accusing staff members of violating criminal law. loch, in some of your writing

you discuss different eras of oversight and described them. explain those eras and how would you describe this new era where there's such aggressive attacks on staffers? >> well, i think if you look back from 1787 all the way up until 1974, which was the wide sweep of our country's history, you find that intelligence is treated as an exception to the madison i don't know -- madisonian rules. that was going to be a delicate exceptional case. but then with the church committee responding to the family jewels leagues we entered a new era which i call an uneasy partnership where congress and the intelligence community were going to try and work together, and that lasted all the way, i think with some bumpy road along the way until

the iran-contra scandal which is a bit chilling when you think about it because we had all this finely embroidered oversight regulation and statutes to guide this partnership and yet it all fell apart, and again it shows you the importance of importance of personality and tone. when jimmy carter was in office he said we are going to follow these regulations and obey the law. and i would argue when the reagan administration came into town it was a much different tone embracing before cheney made it popular, the unitary presidency into that particular model we talked about before where congress doesn't really matter that much in their point of view. so we had a brief period that i labeled the era of distrust starting in the iran contra scandal in 1987 going up until 1992. so i called up the era of partisanship where the house and

senate intelligence committee on every voter they have was strictly along party lines. that didn't happen in the earlier era with the exception to nicaragua goes the purpose as well but now everything became partisan. and then with 9/11, we entered into another which i call the era of ambivalence because even now republicans which tend to be for the community during these earlier areas they were becoming more skeptical about the effectiveness of these agencies. they couldn't warn us about the 9/11 attacks. they got to be wmd hypothesis from iraq so now you have some criticism coming from the republicans as well.

and this latest area that you referred to which i think dates back to snowden i'm calling the era of free balancing where republicans and democrats and the like are saying wait a second, maybe we've gone too far in the security side of the equation and maybe we need to move back towards the liberty side. i made two overarching comment to accountability. first of all i think you've got to have the accountability committee got to have the executive branch willing to share information and all too often that hasn't happened. so you could analyze administrations, one from another, by looking at the willingness of the people at the highest left to work with congress. and i've interviewed every single dci from -- forward and most of them understand what i call the new oversight, the post church committee days. they realize the importance of this. they're madisonians. one of the reasons is they tell me it allows them to share responsibility.

you have a blowout like the bee bay of pigs episode, you can point to the hill and say, well i told those people about it. they were listening. that takes a great burden off the intelligent manager. so even most of them are realizing that the accountability is a good thing for them with the exception and you all know it william j. casey. i had dinner with him once and i asked him what is the role of congress when it comes to intelligence? and he said, the role of congress is to stay the blank out of my business. you can insert your favorite sailor word if you want to do. so he is a very negative attitude. he's the unitarian presidency kind of guy. and it got him into trouble. even with, ironically, the quintessential ostrich cheerleader. maybe it was a combination, barry goldwater, who became very anti-casey when casey was so

disdainful of the senate intelligent committee as to the actions in nicaragua. >> and even when the executive does share information with congress or at least a limited number in this case it was just the two, two on each side, how can those be assured they are actually getting truthful information and how did you get information about these programs that perhaps wasn't being briefed to those four? >> this is when you get into the whistleblowers, i think. in my experience with oversight, it is absolutely essential that any staffer has to develop informal sources of information from within the agencies. they hate this, they absolutely despise it. there are rules that nobody can talk to congress except through

the pr people or the legislative affairs. nobody can talk to the press except through pr. so the agencies hate it. i heard at one point the nro threatened to tap all the phones at the nro to find out who was talking to me. and the nsa was really upset also, to the extent that finally general hayden sent around a notorious directive to the entire workforce telling them that once they have -- the nsa had made a decision they were not to tell anything to congress that would undercut it. so oversight is not really accepted especially when it's vigorous. they are quite willing to share the responsibility when something goes wrong. often, i have to say in my

career, often we found out that something today that it was to appear in the newspaper. and prepress is absolutely essential to legislative oversight. >> i would agree with that. i actually forgot the other side of the equation i wanted to put on the table. you've got to have an executive branch willing to share information. the other side is you have to have a ledgegislative branch will be to take it seriously and get involved and read the information. that can be a problem, as well. i think one of the most important development is the establishment of mandatory reporting requirements. in fact it occurred before the committee about two days which requires a finding for the covert action. and now, when you have any important covert action that it can cost a million dollars or so you have to come up in the greeted the two committees. the act said, and this is if you can get thrilled by the intelligence committee this is in the sense that it required him to factor reporting on all

and portent budgets related activities. even in the domain of executive agreements if a game 90 days in the report but the oversight act says you will let us know in advance of any important activities. but any of the operations, counterintelligence operations. as you recall there wasn't a them a skate patch to because p6 diane roark east cape. but then if you take it in times of emergency you had to tell only eight members. but then, if you take the law seriously, which i think we should, you have to tell the full committee within two days, both so these acts are important, but they haven't always been honored by the executive branch. >> what protections exist for the agency whistleblowers

talking to the members of congress and how does the congress and in particular the members of the committee protect those whistleblowers? >> i believe it was pretty much up to the individual staff to protect their own sources. my staff director would say where do you get that stuff? and i would say i'm not telling you. i didn't tell anybody who my sources were. it's just a lot better for everybody if they don't know. and so i really tried hard to protect them. but the committee as a whole seems to be uninterested in protecting whistleblowers which are their lifeblood. they absolutely are. tom was one of them. he was talking to me about problems before 9/11 and i think that's one of the reasons he got it.

he got the treatment and so did bill benny, who also sometimes talked to me. i think it's evident -- and i think that you have some experience in this -- that the intelligent committees did not sign on to whistleblower protection. they did not include national security information, and so for a long time, they were hung out to dry and there are still an are inadequate protections. and i think it's also -- my case is pretty -- i don't want to use -- around myself but i think that my case indicates a lot that is -- a lot of problems and a lot of dangers that face us today. one was the fbi did finally contact me about eight months after the "new york times" leaked and asked if i would

voluntarily cooperate with them. and i said, yes, i will, except i won't tell you my sources. i'll never tell you my sources. and, of course, that's what they wanted. so i went to the committee and i asked them if they would support me on this. and i did this is a number of times. never got an answer. went to meet with the fbi some months later in february of 2008. and found, to me surprise that it was not a meeting, it was an interrogation. and it became clear at that point that i was a target. and also became clear at that point that the committee had thrown me under the bus. and they repeatedly asked me for my sources and i repeatedly told them i will not tell you my sources. and i said i would not t