even when they were given an evacuation order, an evacuation order to a new york city firefighter means -- or a police officer, i leave when all the civilians are gone. which means they were the last ones to leave, which is why so many of them died. but i can't tell you how many people come up to me, including outside the united states, whop in this building that day and thanked me. you know what they say to me? thank you for your firefighters because if they hadn't remained calm, we could have lost more people in the evacuation than we lost in the attack. now, i'm not sure that's true, but they believe that. but we know of many evacuations that are chaotic and that lead to death during the evacuation. this was not a kchaotic evacuation. this was an orderly, very well handled evacuation. and it only was that because

these men and women gave up their lives. and that is soushs of, i think, tremendous strength for merps. imagine if the headline the next day, in addition to the fact that this was the worst attack in our history was it also was characterized by firefighters and police officers who ran away. can you imagine how that would have affected the morale of the united states and how different was it that the headline the next day was about a terrible attack but also stories of incredible bravery on the part of the fire department, the port authority, the police department, and also single individuals like from morgan stanley and others who played the same role. >> thank you very much. we are not allowing terrorists to terrorize us. >> that's absolutely right. >> i yield back. >> thank the gentlelady.

we have eight members left for questions. we have a second panel. i'm going to have to strictly enforce the five-minute rule. with that, i recognize miss miller. >> thank you. i appreciate you enforcing the five-minute rule. mr. mayor, and i say that with the highest degree of respect because sitting here today, in this place, in this sacred place and having the opportunity, it was my first time to be here last night and joe gave us a tour of this facility and every american, thinking about where they were on that day, when we think about one of the things i think about then is that you, not being just the mayor of new york city, you were america's mayor at that time. you became america's mayor. .and the entire world looked to you for your news conference soes we can figure out what's

happening. here is rudy to tell us what's going on. we were listening to you all the time. so being here today in this place and listening to you and your thoughts and remembrances are certainly a bit overwhelming, certainly emotional. but i think i'm going to go right to picking up a little bit about what you just talked about about the 9/11 committee and some of the relgs they made. one of the things that as you said, it didn't start on 9/11, but i think many people realize we are facing a different enemy than our country has ever faced before. and the battlefield has changed. weir it's an asymmetrical battlefield. who responds? not the military in many cases. it is the first responders that were responding all over the country. whether it just happened in

chattanooga, various things that have happened here. but one of the key recommendations, i think, that came out of the 9/11 commission was they said there were so many of the different agencies that were stove piping their ability to communicate to one another. really, the inability to communicate and i think certainly i've heard you speak om occasions about some of the handicaps that you had here and the inability to communicate properly with one another and the 9/11 commission said we need to go from the need to know to the need to share. the need to share information from all various agencies and yet we still learn some of the lessons. you mentioned about the boston marathon bombings there where, really -- and we had a hearing on this, he's got 12,000, 13,000 agencies across the country. there's 35 police officers here in new york city alone. one thing about the street, street talks. street talks. and the ability to have law

enforcement gather the information, share the information, and from our best intelligence in our country, to make sure it gets down to the boots on the ground and having interoperability, etcetera. so i guess i would just like to have you expand on how important it is to have the ability, the ability to communicate the most simple thing in human behavior of communication and how important it is and for the federal government's role in making sure that we get the resources out into the first responders that people can talk to one another about what's coming, what's happening, god forbid when there is some other attempt to stack or what have you. >> i'll be very brief. because i think commissioner bratton can give you more details on this because both here and in los angeles he was in the forefront of developing criteria that you've used to try to identify terrorists. it's all well and good to have

that criteria or precursors of terrorism and the new york city police department utilizes it, but i'm not sure that's being done all over the country. and it needs to be done. as we've now found out, although new york is a big target and the main target, i think we're now turning into a situation where there are many targets. and with these lone wolves, i think we're going to see smaller towns and more isolated places attack. in a way, that produces its own fear like you're not safe anywhere. therefore, i think this committee could play a useful role in helping the department of homeland security and i think one of its main missions is to make sure that every police department, every fire department, every emergency services department in the united states has at least a basic ability to deal with

spotting terrorists, identifying terrorists, and then how to react if it happens. and i very much appreciate your description of them as cockroaches because that's a great example of the difference. these people are emerging from the ground and it's the police officers that patrol the streets that have the most knowledge of the ground. and sometimes it's the police officers who can interpret the intelligence better. there was one incident during september 11 when it took me four hours to get the information from the federal government that i needed for my police commissioner and police department to interpret. and i wanted the word. they had increased the threat on new york. but they wouldn't give us the words that we used. and i finally was able to

impress on -- oh, i won't say who in washington. i think i said something like i might cancel the world series. because i wanted the word. why did i want the word? i wanted the words because if i could share that with my police department, the words which may mean nothing to an analyst in washington might give a hint to my police officers that it's a bridge, a tunnel, a building that's going to be hit. because they may understand something in the language because they know the city. the analysts in washington doesn't know the city. but our accounts on the street nor the city. and one of the excuses i was given was we don't share information like this with local law enforcement because local law enforcement leaks.

to which -- even though it was shortly after september 11, i just laughed and said you're talking to somebody who was a federal prosecutor for 17 years and don't tell me the fbi doesn't leak. ha. so my department doesn't leak any more than the fbi. and we're not going to leak this information because we know how critical it is. and we don't have time to worry about leaks because if you give it to me now, it can be actionable information. otherwise, i'm going to read about it four days later in the in, times, anyway, so you might as well give it to me. and your committee can perform a very useful function in breaking down that barrier. the protection against these cockroaches are our local police. but they need to get information in order to know what to look

for, not just give information. they need to get information. and these joint terrorism task forces are quite an effective way to do that. and i would really consider expanding. >> thank you, mr. mayor. thank you, mr. chairman. >> in the world series you went for, and the president, perfect strike, as i recall, right? >> as chaled by derek jeter. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for holding this hearing in these solemn grounds. i think as we go back to washington, it's important to go back there and with the perspective of knowing that what happened here was such a tragedy and that we owe it to our country to honor those who lost their lives. and thank you for your

compelling testimony, mayor, and thank you for reminding us how this area has flourished since 9/11. on 9/11, i was under a court order to take a deposition in new york city about a week later. and you can't live too much further away from new york city than i do because i'm in brownville, texas. and opposing council and i had to make a decision because there weren't too many flights going out. so we decided to drive. and it took us three days and i remember when i got here, it wasn't the new york city that i was used . i remember how quiet it was. i was the dust. i remember just how gray it was. and then several years later, i stayed at the very hotel across the street that we stayed in last night. and i remember thinking to

myself, i'll never stay here again because by that time, the jackhammers had come back and they were starting to rebuild. and last year at the invitation of congressman crowley, my friend from queens, i had the pleasure of touring the new freedom tower. i was on the 64th floor and the port authority gave us a tour. and i remember being on that top floor and thinking to myself, what a great tribute it was to the people of the city to be rebuilding and, of course, here we are today. but at the end of the day, the most important thing about this hearing is that we, the american people, the people of new york, great deal of gratitude for rebuilding is for honoring the people that died here that day, i'm going to limit my questions.

i've got a few questions and i'm going to limit it to this. that is we talked about the diversity of the threat that we faced today. because it's not just in new york. it's all over this country. and i'm curious about what your assessment is. we know how prepared the city of new york through local, state and federal cooperation is to deal and prevent these threats. 16 in the last several years. what is your assessment of how other places around the country are prepared to prevent those threats? >> first of all, may i say that september 11 brought us together much closer than a country has ever been for about two or three months, no democrats, no republicans, no liberals, no conservatives, just americans working together. but i can tell you in new york,

opposing counsel would never be able to drive in the same car to brownsville, texas, without beating the heck out of each other. >> well, we did drive separately. >> oh, okay. now i got it. lawyers aren't affected by any of this. but may i just interrupt for one second to suggest to you that one of the funding things you should consider is funding this as a national museum. there's a bill pending to do that. and this should be a national museum. because it affected the whole nation. and i would just like you to know how important i believe that -- how important i believe that is. that this be funded as a national museum. >> we'll take that back to our committees of interest. >> i'm sorry.

the rest of the question? >> yeah. i was curious what your assessment is of how other communities -- >> oh, yes. it's very mixed. to be honest. in my ability to get around and talk to the police and -- and i travel a great deal, some communities are -- some cities and counties are tremendously well prepared. and some are not well prepared. and i've always thought that the mission of the department of homeland security is to get every place in america ready and to sort of set a standard that every community should reach. i mean, everyone should understand anthrax and saran gas and biochemical or biological

agents and how to detect them. and that's a function that the department of homeland security should monitor the present head of the department of homeland security was one of my assistant u.s. attorneys. and i have great respect for him and i think he's doing a very good job of trying to do that. and any assistance you can give him in that regard i think would be enormously important. i think we have to think of the fact that although new york is a major target as is d.c. or los angeles or these new terrorists, let's call them that, might be thinking, let's attack them in places of less resistance. let's look at -- >> like chattanooga. >> like chattanooga. >> and, therefore, what that means is a tremendous burden on the secretary of homeland security and homeland security

department to get a lot of departments that wouldn't necessarily face a lot of emergencies. up to speed. and i think your encouragement and sensible funding of that, working with j. johnson, could be a very important thing because it's something he understands and it's something he's trying to do. >> thank you. >> mr. catko is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mayor, on 9/11, i remember standing in the u.s. attorney's office in syracuse where i was an organized crime prosecutor and watching the events unfold. and it left an indelible impression on me. but also left an impression on me was your leadership that day and your leadership in the days and months thereafter. i think you had a profoundly positive effect on our country and i thank you for that. >> since that time, you gained more experience and more

knowledge on the whole terrorist threat globally and with respect to the united states. and as i see it, the threat matrix has changed. back in 9/11, people came in this country to attack us. and now we have the phenomenon with isis where people within this country of ours, american citizens, are being implored to take up arms against the country, go blow up something, go shoot something. it's a very different threat matrix now and i very much like to have your impression on what you think is the best way to attack it. you kind of touched on it with respect to the violent extremism and how it's branching out to different areas, not necessarily centered. >> one city right nor on or new york city, for example. the biggest thing that i'm concerned about now is how do you counter that violent extremism to communities? one of the things i think we need to focus on is in those

communities nationwide, we see people who might become radicalized, what do you do? how do you go about fighting it? how do you go about interceding before somebody who is dripping in the wrong direction does something terrible? and i'd like to hear your input on that. >> well, first of all, the idea that there would be lone wolf attacks or attacks that were self-generated, two, three people who were native of the question doing this in a way, our government starting about a year ago was acting as if this was a big surprise. bin laden wrote about this in 1997. and some of his surrogates encouraged this in 1998 and '89.

gosh, it happened in london in 2005. those were home grown terrorists. i don't know why we're so far behind all the time. >> again, we're not heating the warnings. >> yeah. i was -- i was one block away from the first bomb that went off in the liverpool station with exactly the same police officer who was with me and got me out of the building i was trapped in. which is a heck of a coincidence and it stopped getting me invited anywhere for about five years. but if i recall correctly, at all four of those bombers were citizens of the uk and two of them were born there. so, i don't know, i think we would have started then saying to ourselves, this is a threat.

well, okay, finally in the last year, we recognized it. and it does require a different law enforcement strategy and it requires a different military strategy. it requires, as i said, the use of the police in a much more energetic way and a much more informed way as our eyes and ears. it also requires something that is controversial, but it's true. it requires understanding there's an organizing principal. these are not singular acts of crime, like, you know, the shooting that took place in brooklyn the other night at west indian parade or a shooting that might take place in chicago or a shooting that might take place here or there or whatever. there's an organizing principal, much like the mafia was an

organizing principal. a mafia murder in new york was different than a murder in new york. the mafia murder in new york had an organizing principal behind it and these attacks have an organizing principal behind it. it's called their interpretation of how mohammed taught jihad, which slault islamic scholars could have great debate. foreign interpretation of jihad is to remove or subjugate the infinel. this comes out of islamic literature. many reformed muslims acce s re, but some muslims accept it. so there's an organizing principal here. if we act in a state of denial out of political correctness, that this is the organizing principal, then we're going to miss a lot of these situations.

because that helps to give us some of the criteria that we're looking for. i had some people think, you know, should be ignored. so the reality is we need to train our police, we need to realize that the organizing principal here is jihad and their interpretation of it. that means that's -- that means we look in the places where that is going to be taught and exploited. social media. unfortunately, mosques. certain groups that are more extremist than others. and that we somehow say the words islamic extremist terrorists and not be condemned as bigots for saying it. congressman king made a

reference to the mafia. when i indicted the first grooum group of mafia members in new york and referred to them as the mafia, i had a demonstration in front of my office. but the italian civil rights league. the italian american civil rights league was founded by a man named joe columbo, who was the head of the columbo crime feel. and i also found out something i didn't know. in the justice department manual, it was improper to refer to a group as the mafia. i could have been penalized. and you know they love to penalize in the justice system. >> oh, yes. i was there for 20 years. i understand that. >> i had actually violated a rule of the justice department in using the word "mafia." and i said, well, punish me because there is a mafia and it has a -- it has an organizing

principal. you know what that principal is? being italian. that's the principal. when there were a bunch of car thefts in southern brooklyn, i didn't go look for asians or hispanics or blacks, i went and looked for italian kids. they were doing all the car thefts. that was profiling. but if i hadn't profiled, i wouldn't have caught them. there are two kinds of profiling. profiling based on hard facts that lead you to the criminal or criminal group or criminal interz here at jihad, or profiling just for the purpose of harming some particular group that is doing nothing wrong. so i think we have to define this word carefully and i think that political correctness has cost us lives.

i do not think the attack at ft. hood would have occurred if we had not been applying political correctness and i think those brave people would be alive tod today. i think they died because of political correctness because no one was paying attention to what was being written by the captain in which he was predicted and promoted. even though his colleagues were saying that he had been a very extreme, erratic and a big ex opponent of jihad. i think he was not penalized and promoted because the people in the military were afraid that they would be akooud cuesed of picking on people of a certain group. >> thank you, mr. mayor. >> miss rice is recognized.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mayor, given your service as mayor to this great city of ours and your professional work since that time, how prepared do you think new york and this country are to handle a large scale cyber attack? that's probably one of the more inevitable attacks that we have to look at, in your opinion. >> not as well prepared as we are for the more traditional attacks. new york city is -- and, again, commissioner bratton i would defer to and he can explain it. but from a long timing a, new york city has constantly increased under different commissioners its response to terrorism. the new york city police department is doing a lot of work as is the fbi in cyber security.

but as a nation, we are way behind in cyber security. ware behind. because it can't be solved by the government alone. american business ves to spend a lot more money protecting themselves than they do the -- if you're the ceo of a large company, that' publicly traded, your expenditures for cyber security come out of your profit and loss. it means a million dollars, $10 million, $100 million and you show less profit in that quarter. and there's no counterveiling benefit that you get for it. it isn't like hiring 50 people and they're productive and you can put something on the other side of the column. american businesses, number one,

have not spent enough time or money on developing cyber security. and number two, the methods and techniques that we use in many cases are contradictory. not everyone works with each other. people don't want to share intellectual property. there are many problems in the area that you are talking about. that have not received the same attention that the other things we talked about earlier, the physical securities and that could be an area where this committee could play a big role in encouraging not only our government as we saw the vulnerability of the internal revenue service. my goodness, that's frightening. that's actually frightening that someone can come in and get documents from the internal revenue service. so i would say that's an area

maybe where this committee should put some great emphasis. one of the big mistakes we make, i think, is we prepare for the next attack as if it's going to be the same as the last attack. and what they're trying to do is trying to figure out some kind of new attack. and i think we've been forewarned about cyber security. i'm very glad you brought it up and i think it's something that should be gave a great deal more attention by both the government and the private sector. >> thank you, mr. mayor. >> mr. herd is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman and ranking member for holding this and mr. mayor. thanks forebeing here today and your leadership during a difficult time. i'd like to thank the city of new york for hosting us. i'm from texas and texans and new yorkers have a lot in common. we're proud of our heritage. we have a bunch of great accents. we're not afraid to fight for

our country. this is the second time i've tried to be here. the first time i tried to come to this great facility, there were so many people here, it was hard to get into. so that warms my heart to know that there are many folks that are not going to forget what happened on those days of september 11th. this is special to me because i spent nine years with undercover options in the cia. mr. mayor, you talked about yemen. the day i left san antonio, texas, to start training in the cia was the day of the cole explosion. we did not take seriously what our enemies were saying then. you alluded to that in your opening remarks. we weren't taking seriously what was being stayed in the late '80s, either. it's usually and i'm nervous that we're not taking serious loy or serious fluff some of the concerns we have from all over the world regarding our current

issues. i've chased al qaeda all over the world. isis's ability to leverage social media is shocking. but one of the things that we have to do is we have to stop it their -- where they live. since you've been out of elected office, you've been a leader in emergency preparedness, in public safety, leadership during crisis. you've been described as turning an ungovernable city into one of the worldwide examples of good governance and an effective management. and you have done deals all over the world. so i'm going to refer to you as a dealermaker. and i have two questions, one on isis, one on iran. what else should we be doing in these places like syria, in some of these cities to help them

stop this skurge in their tracks? number two, people arrived on both sides of the deal and i'm having a difficult time figuring out how the united states benefites from this iranian deal and i love your insights on that. >> on the second, i would refer you to donald trump. he would probably give a much more interesting answer that would give you much more coverage for this committee. on the second question, i think we were completely outnegotiated. if you just go back and look at what the premise of this negotiation was supposed to be, we lost on all those points. this all began, you know, ten years ago with u.n. resolutions that iran would be nonnuclear.

that it wouldn't have any nuclear power. for the reason that i stated, you would have to be an idiot to think they need nuclear facilities in a country that's oil rich and natural gas rich. they don't need the peaceful use of nuclear power. so the premise of the original resolutions was a nonnuclear iran. we gave that away with the preliminary agreement when we began the negotiation with how nuclear should iran be? so what do we get back from that? the release of prisoners? an iran that is going to give up being devoted to the destruction of israel? an iran that is going to give up being devoted to the death of americans? an iran that's going to stop

funding hezbollah, hamas, and about 12 other groups that don't have names yet? we didn't get anything back from that. then, we were going to have ronald reagan trust but verify. well, we're just trusting. we're not verifying. first of all, we're confining it to the iaea. the iaea was fooled twice by iran before. in 2003, in 2005. the fordaul facility, actually, three discoveries that the iaea missed. i'm sorry, i wouldn't trust them. i'm a baseball fan. three strikes and you're out.

trust but verify to ronald reagan meant we verify. we, the united states, we go in and we make sure that they're not hiding nuclear material like they did before. did anybody took the time to read rouhani's memoir, the reformed prime minister of iran, he bragged in his memoir that he fooled us twice before. he brags about it. it is astounding to me that we are trusting him. and then we're giving them 24 da da days, which by the way as a lawyer having read the agreement, i could probably extend it to six months because

you can appeal. and it's not us that raises the objection. it's the iaea who got fooled twice before, actually three times before. i'm trying to figure out what we're getting out of this. we're getting out of this the promise that they're not going to be nuclear for ten or 15 years. if you believe that, there is a bridge right near here i'm willing to sell you. so as a dealmaker, teaching deal making 101, i would give us an f. but that's no different than our reset of our relationship with russia when we gave up the nuclear defense of the czech republic and poland.

and what did we get in return for it? how about nothing. i would not sell my house for nothing. i would get something in return. maybe if we had stuck to the nuclear defense of the czech republic and poland, crimea may never have happened. so i see a one-sided deal, completely in favor of iran. and i see, worse than that, an iranian empire developing. >> thank you. >> with iraq and syria and yemen. >> thank you. >> mr. reclose is recognized. >> thank you, chairman mccall for holding this hearing at this hallowed ground where nearly 14 years ago to the day americans looked into the face of evil

something that took thousands of innocent lives in the mocht cowardly act of terrorism the world has ever known, the evil of radical islamic extremism changed the world that day, it changed the lives of everyone here in this room. for me personally, it compelled me to become a federal prosecutor and later a u.s. attorney. for that reason, i know all too well what the radical islamic terrorists became today. they will not stop, they will not relent, they will not give up in their quest to destroy the american way of life. we're here today in recognition of the fact that we must remain ever vigilant of the threat of rad can extremism and those that seek to cause us harm. but here in this place, it will serve as a somber reminder of the lives lost and just how fragile our freedoms are. so, too, must this place always

be a reminder of the heroic efforts of so many of our police, our fire departments, rescue personnel and volunteer citizens who stood up in a historic time of need for this nation. and i include you in that group, mayor giuliani. your leadership and the aftermath of 9/11 was something that not just the city, but the entire country needed to rebuild and to persevere. it's been said and written by many that we all became new yorkers at that time. and in that respect, you became the mayor to all of us. and i know i join everyone here and everyone around the country that we would forever be grateful for your leadership. i came prepared today as the chairman of this committee's subcommittee on cyber security to ask you your opinions on

that. you've given your comments and answered most of the important questions that i came here to ask. so out of respect for the second panel and respect for your time, i'll just say thank you and yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you very much, mr. radcliff. and let me just say two things very, very briefly. first of all, thank you very much for the compliments about leadership. but i would point out that i rested on the shoulders of giants. that whatever credit i get for leadership, there were hundreds and hundreds of people that were equally as heroic and more so than i was. and it was from them that i derived my ability to move forward and do whatever i could do. so the credit doesn't belong to me. it belonged to all of them. and thank you for your interest in cyber security because i do believe that as congresswoman

rice pointed out, this is the great threat that we face in the future and it's the one that we're not paying as much attention to as we should. >> mr. donovan. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mayor, when you're the most junior member of a committee, by the time the questioning gets to you, you ask the witness what their favorite pizzeria is, and i already know yours. you were not only america's mayor, you are not only the mayor of new york city, you were my mayor. of all the people on this panel, i was a resident of new york city during your -- and i very much appreciate what you've done for this city, what you continue to do. since that time, you have traveled throughout the country for the last 14 years. and i remember calling a friend of mine from a different part of our country after the tragedy that happened right here and told them, wasn't it an amazing

feeling to see all these cars with american flags flying on them, how people have come together? and he said to me, what flag? there weren't flags flying from the cars where he lived. and some people at that time, although we talked about the heroics of people from other cities coming to help us, a lot of people looked at this as an attack on new york and not an attack on america. and this coming friday, you and i will be going to many, many events in our certify to continue our pledge that we will never forget. i'm wondering through your travels throughout the country, have people forgotten? >> yes. some people have forgotten. and it is in the nature of just the human being that as you move further and further away from an event, like the death of a loved

one, you don't forget, but the impact of it is not as -- isn't as great. and, of course, the closer you are to an event, like whether you're a new yorker or you had friends in new york or -- so i think it is the job of this committee to remind people of that. and i want to conclude by commending this committee from the day of inception to today. mr. king, mr. mccall, all the democratic members, think you've been one of the most effective committees in congress in the things that you've done. i think you've been one of the most effective being able to forge bipartisan solutions where you could. and i ask you, in closing, to please consider once again the legislation to make this a national memorial.

because this will serve to remind all americans when we forget. because i think that, unfortunately, this is going to be a war we are going to be in for a long time. so we have to keep reminding americans of what's happening because it's so subtle and it's sometimes hard for them to see. those of you have been in it in some pass and you know it. so if it does happen again, it doesn't happen because we weren't paying attention. >> mr. clauson is recognized. >> got time for one more? >> of course. >> first, i want to thank you for your service and for your bravery.

now, according to my economic understanding, the u.s. economy is about 16 trillion, maybe a little more. we're over 20% of the global gdp. we are the engine of everyone else's economic growth. i think you would agree. $50 billion of trade deficit, roughly, every single month. i think that if china or the european community, just as two examples, had to choose between doing business with iran and selling product at walmart or target, what do you think they would decide? when i hear that this was a bipolar decision between this deal and war, i wonder what happened to our economy. that it is the growth engine for the whole world. and then, mr. mayor, i'd take it another step and say, we have a

financial system. you may know better than me. how many billions of dollars in a arbitrage and hedges take place every day across the continent and the way the foreign corrupt practices law works, if somebody does something wrong and they put their money into our financial system, they get nabbed correct, right? >> correct. >> and, yep, to my knowledge, we have t in the iranian deal we have not used this awesome power of being the center of the global financial system in the leverage for the deal. ich astoui am astounded that we never making a deal based on verification without using the global economic leverage that seems to obvious. i must be missing something here. .i'm not trying to run anybody down in particular. but i think that the this idea that the sanctions would fall

apart is only because we don't want to use our financial system or our global economic power. am i missing something here or would you agree with this different take on the iranian outcome? >> i have not just grave reservations about the agreement. the agreement is, to me, frightening. because we get so little in return, if anything, and we are creating an empire. we are making available to a country that is set on the destruction of our greatest ally, a country that is dedicated to killing americans and continues to say that as they negotiate with us. we are making billions of dollars available to them. everyone on this panel and everyone of any political party

would agree that iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world. why in god's name would you give them billions of dollars? what does it mean to be a state sponsor of terrorism? it means you take money and you give it to terrorists. its means you take weapons and you give it to terrorists. it means if you are a nuclear power, you take nuclear capacity and give it to terrorists. one of the main reasons that these resolutions began was not just the fear that iran would attack israel where missileith . it was the fear that if iran had nuclear capacity, it would hand it off to the terrorists that it is presently sponsoring. and we could va dirty bomb in

new york or in chicago or in london or in paris. somehow, we have forgotten that. iran should have no nuclear capacity. they cannot be trusted with nuclear capacity. could we have used our economic support to stop it? absolutely. absolutely. and finally, when you say the only alternative is war, you make it clear that you will not go to war. which maybe would have been the greatest leverage of all if the military option had not only been kept on the table, but maybe the military option were something that they were afraid of. to win a negotiation, you need leverage. we gave away our leverage when we backed off that red line 12

times. because the ayatollah took the measure of his opponent and he took the measure of his opponent as i don't have to worry about a military response. >> let me close by saying there were many heros that day, that fateful, tragic day and you, sir, were the leader. you are america's mirror and on behalf of a grateful nation, i just want to personally say on behalf of the committee, thank you so much for your service. >> and thank you very much for coming here and reminding everyone of what happened and for your continuing work for the security of our country, which i think is just about the best in the united states congress. thank you. >> thank you. >> in the interest of time, we'll move to the second panel.

>> let me quickly introduce the next panel. first, we have commissioner

william bratton, currently serving as the 42nd commission they are of the city of new york. he previously served as commissioner of the boston police department and the los angeles police department. next, we have commissioner daniel nigro joining the new york city fire department in 1969. he's held every uniform rank within the department during his 32nd year career including chief of the department following the attacks of september 11th. next, we have mr. ielpi who serves as the president of the september 11th families association in great neck, new york, and he became a volunteer fireman in 1963 and rose to the position of chief of the department on september the 11th he helped organize operations at ground zero until midnight and return to the site daily to

assist in the rescue of the operations. he continues his work for nine months to ensure all who were lost or return home including his own son, jonathan, who was in the squad 288. finally, we have mr. gregory thomas served as national organization of law enforcement executives, serves as the senior executive for law enforcement association and the office of the king's county district attorney to the new york city police department. the chair now recognizes commissioner bratton. >> good morning. i am the police commissioner for the decide of new york. on behalf of mayor de blasio, i welcome you to new york city and to this 9/11 memorial and museum. locates of these hearings could not be more appropriate.

this site was hallowed by the lives we lost in the attack. wa been dedicated as a memorial and museum to promise in an event event from happening here or anywhere else in this great city. as you know, three days, we will see the 14th anniversary of the september 11th attacks. in those 14 years, the new york city police department has changed dramatically. its traditional realm of municipal policing and eventual crime disorder and public approval was expanded to include keeping the city and its people safe from terrorism. this morning, i'll provide a brief overview of the current terrorism threat and describe some of the nypd's counterterrorism measures that are constantly evolving and expanding. and provided more extensive written testimony to the committee, as well.

in many respects, we currently face a greater likelihood of attack than we have seen in years. new york city, with regard to the current terrorism threat environment, we now face multiple hazards. lone wolfs, as my deputy commissioner of intelligence says, al qaeda, particularly al qaeda in the arabian peninsula or aqap which operates primarily out of yemen, it remains a distinct threat. they are believed to be the primary driver of the attack in paris on ""charlie hebdo." isil, isis, and ebb establishing a pseudo state between iraq and syria, isil lass fundamentally destabilized the middle east and other parts of the world. the important words there are direct impact and, yet.

isil has been far more successful than al qaeda in driving indirect impactses. i is i l has shunned al qaeda's model which focuses on secretly recruiting and training small cells for the next attack. instead, we have embraced a lone wolf model in the name of the so-called islamic state. isil proms that those who carry out this carnage will be publicly revered on global social media. it will be remembered as heroic fighters who wavent an essential part of a struggle. this is a particular appeal to those who fall in the margins of society. those were appealing at most other things in life. isil ask focused on attacks that are low tech, low cost and high impact. killing with a gun or a car was simply made i.d. to something even those who feel most of

things unfortunately can do. most americans don't know that the law enforcement and counterterrorism intelligence communities have been remarkably busy recently. several men were arrested in new york, new jersey and boston for taking part. and plots being pushed over social media platforms. these recent plots, most uncovered by the fbi, nypd, joint terrorism task force after a failed attack in garland, texas, plots that involve building pressure cooker barns and the days leading up to new york's fourth of july fireworks celebration. this wave of arrests comes after the jttf arrested two new york city women in april, women who were in the process of research explosive compounds to construct an ied. among the targets they discussed for their barn plot was a police funeral for officers killed in the line of duty. i'm proud to say i was able to meet and tharng the new york

city police detective who spent more than a year on this case and was a linchpin in that investigation. none of these plots, had these gone forward, would have had the scope of the attacks that happened here. in that respect, they do not have the depth of those we face from al qaeda even at its strongest. but while the threat from terrorist groups is not as deep has grown to be mild wide, indeed, worldwide. after the worst terrorism attack in in, new york history, new york city proved its resilience. but any terrorist attack in this city, regardless of scale, would have a profouns effect. here, across the country and throughout the world. that is why, even with the significant funding for the department of homeland security and its appropriators in congress the nypd continues to invest our own resources in this fight. and in the "charlie hebdo" attacks in paris, we saw coldly executed by weapons and munit n munitions.

the nypd team flew to paris and was quickly briefed on all the lessons learned there. hostage negotiators went to sydney, australia. when isil-driven attacks occur in the about a do museum, they were assigned to interpol travel to tunisia.