host: does he plan to bring in a legislators out to hawaii to set down the agenda for trying to get this bill reconciled? guest:?j that we know of. he is deferring to the leadership in congress, the democratic leadership in the house and senate and that will happen again as i go to a public conference committee to iron out the differences between the senate and house bills. i do not hear any talk that they will bring people physically out to hawaii. .

it is quite a complicated assessment we have to make here, but i think as far as dealing with the military, i think he has been careful because he is in contact and seems to be quite possible with the military, too. >> the book is from mount vernon to crawford, the history of presidents and their retreats, its author, ken walsh, chief washington correspondent for u.s. news and world report has been our guest. thank you for being onto program. >> thank you for having me. host: we want to let you know who is on "washington journal" tomorrow, sunday, december 27. barbara slater of "the washington times" an jonathan broder of g.q. weekly will be here to discuss foreign policy and then we will have steven hess from the brookings institution and dan thomasson of scripps howard news service to talk about president obama's first year in office. thank you for watching this edition of "the washington journal" and we will see you tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.

eastern. coming up, the communictors, and at 10:30, a senate hearing on the backlog of d.n.a. evidence collected for unsolved rape cases, and later, a former c.i.a. intelligence officer on u.s. policy in afghanistan.

tonight, on "america and the courts" encore presentations from c-span's supreme court week special. the supreme court jurn aferlist lyle denison an joan biskubic on covering the courts and appellate attorney maureen maloney on arguing before the court tonight at 7:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. in the mid '90's, newsweek named omar wasow one of the 50 most influential people to watch in cyberspace and since then he has created the social networking site blackplanet.com and explained new technologies on oprah. sunday night he talks about his current studies at harvard and what's ahead.

tomorrow on "news makers" national institutes of health director dr. francis collins on the latest developments in stem cell research, the future of genome technology and how nih may be affected by the healthcare bill making its way through congress. he is interviewed by reporters from usa today and c.q. weekly.com. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] cheer clear next, broadband expansion in the united states and blair levine is back at the federal communications commission, this time as the omnibus broadband initiative executive director, and he is our guest this week on "the communictors." amy schotts of the wall street

journal is joining in on the questioning. mr. levine, we're about 50-odd days away from the national broadband plan being presented to congress. can you give us a status update on that report? >> sure. as we set out in july, we have been getting status updates all along. in september, we laid out for the f.c.c. where we thought the state of broad broadband was in the united states. in november, we looked at the problems we needed to deal with. a couple weeks ago we looked at how to address those problems and right now, we're in the situation where over the holidays we are busy trying to write up our best view of what is in a very, very extensive record, literally tens of thousands of pages have come in. we have had over 30 workshops where these issues have been debated. we have had a number of field hearings, a number of public notices where we asked people specific questions and

we're in the process now of taking all that information in and we will be talking with the commissioner's staff and the commissioners, of course, in january, trying to make a recommendation that will helpfully put our country on the right path toward a very healthy broadband ecosystem over the next ten years. >> what is most important to you in developing this broadband plan? >> well, i think there are a number of things. congress asked for four things specifically. first, they ask in the plan, make sure that we connect all americans. second, that we make sure that there is a plan for having broadband be affordable. third, that it be utilized to the maximum extent, and fourth that we have a plan to assure that broadband is used to solve certain public problems, such as how do we reform healthcare, how do we save energy, how do we improve education, how do we improve job training, so what is most important to me is that we find a way to meet the congressional mandate. >> cost estimates of getting

broadband expanded to all americans or to a great majority of americans, vary widely. can you narrow down what you think the cost is right now? >> well, it depends on what you want to do with it. one of the things we did in september was give the preliminary cost estimates. what does it mean to build out a system to what percentage of americans at what speeds. for example, if we think that broadband, if we want to make sure that 90% of americans are receive broadband, you have at least one alternative to receive a broadband speed of ten megabits, it is not clear to me that there is any gap at all. that is to say, i'm not sure we need any new government dollars or even that many new private investment dollars to achieve that goal. on the other hand, if you want to get 100% of americans achieving 100 megabits, that order of magnitude is an incremental investment, either private or public, of about 350 billion, and there is a lot of

variation, like whether you want to go to 95% or do you want to go to 25 megabits? our basic view is that the market ought to drive those kinds of decisions almost everywhere, but it is also very clear that there is some percentage of americans, somewhere between five and 10%, who aren't going to receive what we think of as a minimum level of acceptable broad broadband and that's where the government does have to step in. that's where we look to something like universal service to solve that problem. part of the problem in solving the problem is that the current universal system is broken. we have to simultaneously fix it as it is and transition it to support broadband instead of supporting voice. it is a little akin to changing the engine of the jet plane while it is in flight but we're doing our best to figure out how

to do that. >> what would you say the minimal level of universal broadband would be? >> we're looking at that now and will be discussing that with the commissioners. as we talked about at the september meeting, there are a number of different use cases for people. generally speaking, i think kind of the market today is about three megabits that. is to say the average american uses it in a way that you need a download speed of 3 megabits to do the kinds of things that most americans do. the use case seems to be increasing at 25% per year in terms of how people use it in terms of the download speeds. we want to have the universalization mechanism produce kind of the minimum that gets us to, i think, about where we are today, maybe a little bit more. there is kind of a big stepup when you go to, like, high definition video and things

like. that aim not sure that's what we need, but there is a lot of different elements about what we want people to be able to do but kind of where the step functions are in terms of cost so that if you move up, where do you cost a lot more money, but i think it's somewhere in the kind of order of what people are doing today in terms of what we want to make sure is universal coverage in the next five to ten years. >> so you're talking about 3 megabits per second for folks who don't have high speed right now? >> i think, you know, we're studying the economics, two, three, four, those are all kind of in range, and i might note that, you know, a lot of people say, gee, we ought to have really big goals of 100 megabits to every home. when you look at the countries that have said they're doing that, what they're actually doing is things like 100 megabits to most homes, but in terms of the universalization goal, which is quite different,

they are roughly in the order of magnitude of that one, two, three category. >> so recently are rick boucher, head of the house subcommittee released a letter to you guys saying he thought we should have 50 meg megabits per second to 80% of homes in about five years. what do you think of that? do you think that's achievable? >> there are a number of different parameters. for example, his letter said actual speed as opposed to advertised speed. that makes a big difference. again, as we talked about in our september meeting. >> doesn't it make it even harder? >> if it you have it the actual, it is harder. one of the things we want to do -- i think that's a worthy goal but what we want to point out to the decision makers like the congressmen is that, yeah, that's great. if we think we have a path for doing it, here is a path, but if that path requires congress to act in a certain way or the f.c.c. to act in a certain way,

here is what they need to do, so you know, i think it's very worthy to kind of stay kind of stretch goals and see what we can do to try to get there, but, again, broadband is primarily a function of private investment. the big news in terms of fixed wireless networks over the next few years will be the investment made by the cable industry and upgrading the network to docsys3. it is not clear it will give it a 50 actual, but at peak times -- not peak in terms of usage but in terms of speed, they probably can get there, but the question is actually whether a goal like that requires a fiber upgrade, and then that depends on whether people like at&t and some others decide to, in response to cable, upgrade their networks. >> mr. levin, you have talked a couple of times about the broadband plan being market

driven. >> yes. >> i want to read two criticisms from public interest groups and get your response. >> sure. >> this is from public knowledge , gigi sowen, and there was no discussion of opening telecommunications networks to competitors and no discussion of structural separation of carriers into wholesale and retail components. these are factors that the harvard berkman center told the f.c.c. in a study two months ago were the reasons other countries have surpassed ours and this is from free press and that something has to be done about the duopoly of local cable and telephone companies that control virtually every broadband market in america. >> uh-huh, correct. let me say i have a lot of respect for both public knowledge and free press. i find their criticism not very productive. first of all, as to the unbundling -- the ideas of bundling the structural

separation. the berkman study did a fantastic job of pointing out various things that were going on throughout the world, but i think that we asked them to do that. we very much wanted to have an understanding of what was going on in the world, but there are certain things where what is happening in some countries really isn't that germane to helping us figure out where do we go from here? i would just point out as to unbundling, look, the courts threw that out, and we're not that terribly interested in moving towards things which will just freeze capital investment and have long complicated court battles. we may be proposing some things will be challenged. that always happens. i will just say that one doesn't strike me as that productive. structural separation, i haven't heard from anyone in congress or from anyone at the commission or really in the record, people asking for structural

separation. but i would also answer both of them by saying that one of the problems i have with their crilts teak is they failed to look at what is really going on in the market. this goes to the other study we asked for which is the study done by the columbia telecom think tank up at columbia university, and what they are pointing out, and it is a really big fact, that there is going to be two major investments in broadband networks in the united states over the next few years. one is, we talked about it just a few seconds ago, the cable industry is updating docsys 3 and two phone companies are upgrading wireless networks for the first time to provide broadband on a wireless mobile basis, so-called lte or 4g, fourth generation. we know those things are going to happen. those are baked in. that's a profound change in market. that is probably the biggest

change in the last five years. what we don't know is how consumers will respond to that. we pointed out in the september meeting that if consumers respond to those changes by suddenly saying hey, we really love the greater speed, and we're going to move up to higher levels of speed, cable is going to be in a fabulous position, and in fact, they will actually be the only provider of what will then be the generally accepted broadband. that is an interesting scenario, you know? it is just as plausible that people can react by saying we don't need these higher speeds. we really like the mobility, so instead of moving to docsys 3, we will buy the slightly more expensive wireless mobile but we aren't that interested in the fix because, you know, we only need four or five megabits. we don't know what is going to happen. it seems to me that is a

profound thing and if you don't know what is going to happen, the kind of very major surgery that those public interest groups are proposing, which, by the way, again, there is really not much support for it in the record and certainly no support for it on capitol hill and you really have to wonder why, you know, looking at as a practical matter, given what the courts have done, you have to ask yourself, is that really on the table? but the bigger thing is it is really in my view not appropriate to be looking at those kind of things when there is such uncertainty about the market. i think it is great that we have a market that is responding to certain kind of competitive dynamics. people are plairking very big investment bets, moving in different directions, and i think we have to wait and see kind of what happens there. i do think that there are concerns about competition. i don't accept their criticism that we are doing nothing about

competition, and indeed, there are a number of things whether it be allowing consumers to know about what kinds of performance they are getting, what kind of performance their neighbors are getting, not their literal neighbors but available in their neighborhood, the spectrum initiative that we have been working on. we don't know whether wireless will ultimately be able to compete with wire. we know if we don't have more spectrum out there the possibility of it competing is almost none. one of the things the report did say which is troubling in terms of competition is that no new wire fixed competitors are really on the horizon, so i think there is certain levels of uncertainty. we're going to try to do all the things we think are pros tiff, but again, i just -- while i have great respect for those two organizations, i don't really accept their criticism as being useful and practical at this time. >> this is comvment span

"communictors" program, and our guest is blair levin, broadband executive director with f.c.c. and served as former assistant to reed hunt, former f.c.c. chairman. our questioner is amy schatz from the wall street journal. >> open access became an issue after the berkman study which the f.c.c. asked for. you say there is no support on the hill but there was arguably not that much support on some parts of the hill for net neutrality either. >> i completely agree with you. i'm supportive of net neutrality. >> i think it depends on the party, but when you're talking about competition issues like this, it sounds like you're basically saying that from your perspective, open access is not an issue. unbundling is not an issue, that you think the entity should be going down and that's sort of off the table now. >> no, that's not what i said. we did ask for the berkman study and we gave them complete and

total editorial freedom in doing it. we simply asked when we announced it publicly we would like a review of everything that has gone before. we thought that was an important foundation stone for having a data-driven analytic record. they did a lot of things that are very helpful to understanding what is going on, but fundamentally, it's backward looking. it's valuable but fundamentally backward looking, and we also asked the columbia folks to be more forward looking. we thought both foundations were very important. on bundling, it covers a wide spectrum of things. the court threw out certain kinds of unbundling things but there are still still unbundled network elements that are provided for in the law and still exist. there were a certain kind of categories where we will be looking, but kind of the large scale let's say -- let's kind of

go backwards to precisely where we were back in 2003, 2002, 2001. that's really not practical. the court decision definitely tied the hands of the f.c.c. moving forward. we have, you know, there is always a choice when you do a plan like this about whether you want to be kind of -- what you want to say, how you want to approach it and we're trying to approach it in a way that is visionary and practical, and the notion, you know, you can say there is not that much support from the hill on net neutrality. i disagree. you can lock look at the committee chairman and subcommittee chairman and admittedly there appears to be a partisan divide about it, but i haven't heard anybody on the hill say that structural separation is where we awed to be heading. by the way, just to be clear, i'm not sure i think it is a good idea either, but that is not the only measure of things. i think that one of the -- you

know, there are certain things that are very different about america. in a lot of the countries that thebergman center covered, the tell tell cois the only majority provider of people in the united states we have a telecommunication company and telco company to provide broadband. there is advantages and disadvantages to that, but that's where we are, and we plan on building a plan based on america's strengths and trying to come pe sate for certain kinds of weaknesses but building on where we are. >> soy basically it is cable and phone companies moving forward and they will drive the next generation of broadband and whatever they will be doing to increase their services wherever we are going. are there things the government could do to help those companies increase their offerings? >> first of all, i disagree with

the premise of the question. when you look at the broadband universe, you're just talking about the networks. competition, there is a function where there is competition within and between the networks but what we see happening with the broader broadband system is a lot of the innovations, a lot of the job growth, a lot of the investment, a lot of the new applications, those are being driven by other horses, not simply about the networks. the single biggest driver of growth in broadband today is the i-phone. that is driving people to all kinds of uses. it it is -- the demand for spectrum is grow. has gone hugely. the people are experiencing broadband in a completely different way than you would have anticipated prior to the arrival of the i-phone, and by the way, i think even apple itself didn't anticipate it, because when they originally came out with the i-phone, they weren't really creating a platform for the application. that kind of developed later and that's really a stunning and

very important development, so yes, we are focused on trying to see what we can do to make sure there is a better competitive dynamic between the existing providers but we're also trying to make sure that there is kind of healthy competition within the ecosystem. that's one reason we focus on the set-top boxes, and that's one device that hasn't seen the kind of innovation that you have seen with computers, laptops, notebooks, et cetera or mobile devices, so that's one of the reasons we are looking at that. >> what about the national broadcasters worried about their spectrum being taken away. what do you say to them? >> look, first of all, we're not taking away anybody's spectrum. here is what we are saying. number one, we believe the record is clear on this, in three or four years, our country will have a very big problem with its mobile broadband unless we act now to start making sure there is more spectrum put into

the system. >> you know, there are some broadcasters who are saying there is no evidence in the record, and i don't know what record they are looking at. there is significant evidence in the record that that will occur. number two, we have to have a plan that gets us more spectrum or the consequences will be that the american broadband experience will be much more extensive and the it will be louder than our international competitors. when you consider that the mobile broadband platform will be the most important platform for economic growth, the most important platform for job growth and most important platform for investment in the next ten years, this is a very, very, serious problem for the country. it's a huge opportunity for america. we're extraordinarily good at applications. it's not an accident that apple is here. it is not an accident that google is here. it is not an accident that

facebook is here. this is a tremendous opportunity that if we don't have the spectrum necessary to build that platform, all of that is going to go elsewhere and the great companies of the next decade will be somewhere else, and so that's the problem. so if you accept that as a problem and you can argue about that, but it seems off the record it is pretty clear, then the question is what do you do about it? now, interestingly, the broadcasters have the spectrums are that is well suited to help alleviate this problem. we're not talking about taking away from broadcasters. rather, what we're talking about is asking the question, can we create a market mechanism so that as the importance of this becomes clear, and as the cost of not having it becomes clearer, we can have those broadcasters who don't need all the spectrum, and by the way, most broadcasters, not all, but most broadcasters are using all of their spectrum very

infrequently, if at all. some broadcasters want to do big high definition programming at some time, but almost no one is using the entire 19.4 million bits of information stream all the time. it's just not happening. it's perfectly fine. it is kind of an interesting debate. we're trying to figure out market-based solutions so that those broadcasters think it is worthwhile to keep all of theirs, if that's what they think is worthwhile. people are making a market-based decision and that's ok, and other broadcasters think that most of the value is not by the airstream, but 85% of it is created by the transmission over cable and satellite, so the value to them of that spectrum is less than i think people know. people tend to put it in a binary framework like we either have it all or we're dead.

that's not the way any business works. business is always shifting the assets. the most significant investment it makes, the value of the asset that broadcasters control, which is an asset that belongs to people of the united states, is order of magnitude, 60 to $80 billion, and now that was an investment that was made basically 60 years ago at a completely different time and completely different context, and you have to ask yourself, should -- if the country looks at that as an investment, as it should, is that the right way to be inducting that asset? in terms of job growth, in terms of investment, in terms of innovation, in terms of what we want our country to be? there is an analyst, craig movette, wisely respected on wall street who says ten years

from now, do we want to be known as the best broadcast television country or the best mobile broadband country? now, i think as a practical matter i think we can do both, but here is what is almost certainly true. if we don't get more spectrum into the system, we will not be the best mobile broadband country and that's really important for this country to aspire to. >> you seem to be focusing a lot of your time on the commercial spectrum. if you're talking about an efficient use of spectrum and people will say government is not necessarily using their spectrum efficiently. there is plenty of federal agencies sitting on chunks of airwaves and not doing much with t why are you focusing so much on commercial when you have the government sitting right there? >> again, i just have to disagree with the premise. it's absolutely true that the press, in covering us, has focused a lot of time because

the conflict with the broadcasters is fun to write about. we have spent a lot of time working with other government agencies in a much quieter way, trying to figure out again what are market-based incentives that can help drive government officials to a more accurate assessment of spectrum? that is to say, you know, if they're not really using it, then we need to put that into some kind of commercial play as well. it's just that those discussions tend to be quiet, whereas the discussions of the broadcasters tend to be more public. >> so -- but we're spending a lot of money. >> let's say you get the airwaves and use them for broadband. arguably you will auction them off. >> well, i think there is a rule with the licensing and you can't make a decision between how much you get and who you auction them

off to. >> let's go with this premise so if you do auction them off, how do you auction them off in a way thaw just don't allow at&t, verizon to get even more dominant in the u.s. wireless market than they already are? if you look at their spectrums they are so ahead of t-mobile. >> it's a great question. the problem somebody until you know how much you're getting back, it's an irrelevant question. the broadband plan has plenty of questions we need to address. we're dealing with a lot of questions. the questions of the specifics of how the f.c.c. should address spectrum allocation, and again, this is not a problem that is right in front of our face. this is a problem that we're

talking about for 2014, 2015, which means you have to start the process now, but those questions should be addressed when you know what the market conditions are, and how you know how much spectrum you are getting back. >> will we see a plan for public safety issues in spectrum? >> yes. >> last question. >> when might we get more he details about this plan? >> the public safety plan? ought plan in general. >> look, we have been, even our critics have admitted, this is the most open and transparent process of the f.c.c. has ever done. you have never had a process where pretty much every month we have given benchmarks and told people where we are. what the public already knows is that you have essentially a first draft of kind of stating the man, stating where we are, are ways offing thinking about the problem. i suspect that over the course of the month of january, people will hear a more granular

version of ways of thinking about solving the problem, so i think that's where we have to kind of leave it for now. i suspect in january there will be a lot of discussion and february we'll release it. >> february 17 is still a firm date? >> that's the date that congress set and that's the date we man on meeting. >> blair levin, executive director for the f.c.c. f.c.c. and we hope you will come back after february 17 and give us a live update. thank you both. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> coming up here on c-span, a senate judiciary committee hearing on the backlog of d.n.a. evidence collected for unsolved rape cases. then at 12:20 p.m. eastern, a

former c.i.a. tell intelligence officer on policy in afghanistan and later scholars and former presidential advisors discuss u.s. foreign policy. in the mid '90's, newsweek named omar wasow as the one to watch

for cyberspace. he has explained new technologies on oprah. sunday night he talks about his current studies at harvard and what's ahead on c-span's "q&a". tomorrow on "news makers" national institutes of health director dr. francis collins on the latest developments in stem cell research, the future of genome technology and how nih may be affected by the healthcare bill making its way through congress. dr. collins interviewed by reporters from usa today and cq weekly.com. it airs at 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span.

>> good morning, everyone. today the judiciary committee is holding a second hearing on real authorize ition on the groundbreaking justice for all act, and the justice for all act includes the debbie smith rape kit reduction act, authorizing significant funding to reduce the backlog of untested rape kits so victims do not have to live in fear and we have seen this happening around the country. now we're going to examine some disturbing reports that despite the important progress we've made tone sure justice for rape victims, in too many

jurisdictions, large numbers of kits continue to sit untested. when d.n.a. evidence taken from rape victims can be iewbsed to find and convict criminals and instead it sits on a shelf and rape victims are victimized once again and our communities become more dangerous rather than safer. that's unacceptable and we have to fix that problem. since we passed this law in 2004, it has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars to states to reduce quack logs and i have worked with senators on both parties to ensure that full funding for the debbie smith act each year and i compliment those senators in both parties who joined with me to get that funding. of course, i welcome debbie smith and her husband to the committee once again.

she lived in fear for years after being attacked before her kit was tested and her perpetrator was caught. debbie and her husband rob worked tirelessly to ensure that others need not experience her ordeal. on a personal basis, we just mentioned, debbie, you and rob, and i have talked so many times and i will say it again, thank you for being here. rob, thank you for being here. the two of you are, in my orbit of friends, i put you right there right at the very first line and two people i admire greatly. the remuch of these untested rape kits is something i have heard again which is a great comfort to all of us here. the debbie smith program is

working its way to tremendous gains across the country. i have heard from the justice st meaningful backlog reductions across the country. eric buhl, the director of the vermont forensic laboratory described to me how federal funding for the case management physicians has resulted in the elimination of all backlogs in vermont to check d.n.a. evidence to solve cases. i hope the state of vermont will be an example for other jurisdictions. i will also note that eric was y clear in saying that vermont's success would not be possible without the federal funding through the debbie smith program. having said all that, it's clear we would not be here today, though it is still not a problem. despite the good strides made, and the significant federal funding for backlog reduction we have seen alarmingly reports.

a study last year found 12,500 untested rape kits in the los angeles area alone. while los angeles has since made progress in addressing the problem, other cities are reporting backlogs almost as severe. the justice department released a report last month finding that 18% of open unsolved rape cases evidence had not even been submitted to a crime lab. the justice department goes to one key component of this problem. no matter how much money we send to crime labs for testing, samples can help solve cases sit on the shelf in police evidence rooms and never make it to the lab and & it does no good. police officers have to understand the importance of testing this vital evidence. they must learn when testing is appropriate and necessary. in too many jurisdictions, rape victims go through a further hardship to take these samples. did will help law enforcement

get criminals on the street and they just sit on these untested and it is unacceptable in any jurisdiction. the backlog problems in some jurisdictions show that we're the victims of our own success. the effectiveness of d.n.a. testing and more and more samples and more and more cases are vent to forensic labs. law enforcement also faces difficult questions of priorities when there are limited resources. so we're beginning to learn of possible solutions to these different dynamics. there must be national standard and protocols and best practices given clear guidance to police officers about when kits and other relevant d.n.a. should go to labs. every jurisdiction must have real incentives to provide come pe competence in training and put it in place for the officers who handle d.n.a. evidence. we have to ensure good

communication, compatible technology among labs and prosecutors in law enforcement. we also should reexamine regulations requiring samples sent out to good private laboratories to be reeb tested and government laboratories and they cost time and money as well as our ability to reduce backlog. i thank our fellow senator for putting this hearing together and her leadership on this issue while many committee members on both sides of the aisle are committed to fixing this, and senator kyl, from arizona, working closely with me to get the debbie smith act passed. now let's get to the bottom of the problem, and we can solve that, there is no question in my mind we can solve it. there is no question in my mind we will solve it. we will.

senator sessions. >> thank you, chairman leahy. i have firmly of the view that we are not, as a nation, investing enough money into the kind of forensic evidence gathering capabilities that can help us reach the best way to fight crime, particularly crime like rape which tends to be reeb pet tiff. people tend to be repeat offenders and i really believe we should do a lot more about that. i am not happy frankly with the state and local governments. it has always been frustrating to me that we have increases in law enforcement, but not enough for forensics, and just not just d.n. a. i mean, there is fingerprints. there is forensics for the guns and firearms cases an all kinds of other scientific evidence and all this backlog leaving cases unsolved and not going forward,

even simple drug analysis cases that often delay prosecutions for months, many months, simply waiting on a chemist's report to determine the substance the individual had was illegal, so i guess, mr. chairman, i really think that we are on to something that is important. i also believe the department of justice should be taking the lead in staying and studying d.n.a. and how it could be better applied, what kind of protocol and best practices should be out there, what kind of new techniques are developing now in d.n.a. that can make or help local officials identify repeat criminals earlier in their processes and stop victimization and actually reduce crime, so i think there are a lot of things we need to

do. i don't think that this federal government should be bearing the responsibility of paying for every rape kit in america, and it just doesn't strike me as a smart thing, so we need to be figuring a way to get our local law enforcement up to where they need to be, and if we can help create the data base, the infrastructure, the protocols an research, that would be our first choice, and i have supported and will continue to support additional federal resources to accelerate and improve our state and local forensics capability. i think that's an important matter. i look forward to this excellent panel. thank you. >> thank you very much. we begin with debbie smith, who is the leading national advocate for the elimination of rape kit testing backlogs since she was raped and kidnapped near her home in 1989.

more than six years later, her assailant was finally caught and linked to the crime through the use of d.n.a. evidence. she has worked tirelessly along with her husband rob to raise awareness of the importance of d.n.a. evidence containing the rape kits. she worked closely with me and other members of the congress to address the rape kit testing backlogs. she has lent her name to the debbie smith rape kit reduction act which passed as part of the justice for all act of 2004. i remember that phone call i made to her that day. i think i caught you at an airport or somewhere to tell you the good news, and as i recall, both of us were pretty emotional. it has been reauthorized in 2008, and so, please go ahead. >> let me say how honored i am to have been included in this panel before you today. as a surviving victim of sexual

assault i understand the great importance of the work to be done. i don't bring any kind of professional perspective to this table seated with some of the top professionals in their field but what i can offer you is firsthand knowledge of the importance of timely testing of d.n.a. evidence and the elimination of the current backlog of both suspect and offender -- suspect and victim kits. for the next few minutes, i would like to ask each of you to remove your political hats, and i would like to ask you to take your place as a husband, father or brother, or as a mother, sister or friend. you have just received the news that your loved one was abducted from her home, taken to the woods where she was robbed and raped. he entered her home in the middle of the afternoon through a door that was left unlocked for a matter of moments. this masked man repeatedly said he would return and kill her if she told anyone. she believed him. she cried hysterically pleading with you not to call the police,

but in your heart, you know that it's the right thing to do. you call the police and your loved one sits in shock as she's asked countless questions. your heart is breaking as you watch her trying to hold on to her sanity. watching her trying to struggle and make sense out of what has just changed her life so completely hurts beyond measure. you feel helpless, wanting to take away the pain that has just so very evident in her eyes. within your heart and mind, a search begins because surely there has to be something that you can do to make it better or somehow easier but you find that that search is in vain. you convince her now that she needs to go to the hospital to have the only physical evidence taken. this person that you love is begging you not to make her go, but you know that you have to deny these pleas just as you denied her cries not to call the police. your prayer is that you're helping her to do the things that she would do, make the right decisions, ones that she

would make herself if only she could. it's what you have been taught is the right thing to do. the next step. as the two of you walk into the hospital, you try to make her understand that this really is necessary. it is the only way that we can catch this man and provent him from hurting anyone else. she walks like a frightened child, terrified and confused. she hears you tell the receptionist that she was raped. now her mind begins to reel, no, because it can't be true. rape just doesn't happen to people like me. the nurse then leaves the two of you to a room where the questions begin all over again, questions, questions and still more questions. you begin to wonder if you really have helped her to do the right thing after all. the look in her eyes conveys that the sheer desperation she is feeling, needing to know that someone is on her side, that someone truly believes her, but her nightmare continues as she is asked to lie down on the table to put her feet in the

stirrups an spread her legs, a male doctor then appears and begins this invasive procedure by probing, plucking, scraping and swabbing her just hours after having been attacked by mother man. her face feels -- her face reveals her humiliation. she is crushed and feeling even more vulnerable, what was left of her self-esteem has now completely vanished from her limp body. simply put, she has been violated all over again. you only hope that one day this very procedure will bring justice. as you leave the hospital, you trust things are going to be better now but it doesn't take long before the vacant stares give away that she has been robbed of any joy in life. her fear is very apparent as you watch her struggle to leave her house, or to even allow the children out of her sight as her rapist threats will not leave her mind. remember, i know where you live and i will come back to kill you if you tell anyone. because you know her so very well, you fear that one day you

will find that she has taken her own life. all she wants is her freedom, peace of mind. she wants to feel safe. she wants justice. but she waits. my husband and i lived this nightmare. when a rape victim submits to this intrusive four-hour evidence collection process, she at least knows that she has done her part, done everything that has been asked of her to keep this man from hurting anyone else. unfortunately, there is a very good chance that this vital evidence will sit on a shelf with thousands of other kits, each box holds within it vital evidence that is crucial to the safety of women everywhere. statistics prove that the average rapist will rape 8-12 times before he is caught. how many of these rapes could be prevented? i merely existed for six and a half years, waiting for my rapist to be identified, trying my best to deafen the sound of his voice in my ears but the fear -- but for fear for myself

and my family held my heart and soul within its grip. i became suicidal, seeking peace and rest from the pictures that played in my mind constantly, but finally d.n.a. revealed the identity of my rapist, giving me the sweet breath of validation and promised justice. i want every victim of sexual assault to experience this gift of renewed life and i am here today on behalf of those thousands of victims whose cases continue to sit on the shelves. i am here for the future victims and for those who sit in a prison cell who have been wrongly accusesed. i speak for amy, who was attacked in 1996. she had no hope that her rapist would be ieb dent fied because the rape kit collected yielded very little d.n.a. evidence. amy tried to find piece but her memory but her memory through therapy, antidepressants

and alcohol. by 2004, d.n.a. technology had changed. her evidence was retested and revealed the d.n.a. profile of her attacker and has linked him to at least two other cases. amy says in her own words "today i have hope. hestill haunts me. i still have fear, fear but i also have hope and a new purpose. i am also here for those who can no longer speak for themselves. a lab scientist in florida related the story of a rape victim who waited until she could no longer wait anymore. this was evidently a case that had been worked -- they had worked on for some time for the day that a d.n.a. match was made, the scientist went to deliver the news in person to the detective working the case. the detective looked at her with a solemn face but said that's great news but the victim committed suicide last night." unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. it's now time that i would ask you to put your political hats back on, because by doing this it empowers you with the ability

to make a real difference. it is within your capacity as legislator to make sure that these kits are taken off the shelf and reviewed to ascertain if there is any viable forensic evidence within. can you imagine going through this horrible exam examination only to have the results sit behind locked doors? when someone is robbed, everything possible is done to find this person that has taken what doesn't belong to them. prosecution is pursued and the guilty is made to return what was stolen to its right rightful owner but you are powerless today to return to a rape victim what was taken from her because you can't restore her dignity, her innocence or her peace of mind. you can can't remove those pictures from her mind without that appear without warning. you just can't, but you can give her justice by making her apist pay for his crimes. lady liberty stands proudly in the new york harbor offering freedom for all within our

borders. equal justice under law is etched in stone. across our supreme court building and our flags are raised high. symbolic of our pledge of liberty and justice for all. sexual assault victims across our country wait for that pledged freedom from the fears -- from the chain of fear and guilt. her attacker would have constrained her. she anticipates the promise promised justice for the crime committed against her. i ask that you use your power to award her what is promised to all americans, liberty and justice for all. thank you. >> >> because i know you and rob so well, i think listening to your testimony, many people can understand why when i called you a few minutes after we passed

the bill why that was such an emotional phone call for both of us. i thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> and rob, i thank you, too. >> senator, the next witness is from someone you know well so i will ask you to please introduce him. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you, mrs. smith, for that moving story and your courage, not only for telling your own story but also for being the voice for so many victims out there, and on behalf of senator frank and myself, we welcome steve reading, our next witness and a minnesotan. when i became the county attorney, over a million people in minneapolis, 45 suburbs, i came in from the outside without a lot of criminal experience and i wanted to put someone in charge of the violent crimes division that had the trust of the people in the office and that was steve reading.

he served well in that role but most importantly for our hearing today, he is one of the national experts on dna and that means not only being a tough smart trial lawyer and being able to convince a jury hike so many good prosecutors but it also means having the willingness and determination and intellect to learn the science of d.n.a. which is not that easy for so many lawyers to dig in and read all the scientific articles, because we have to be as sophisticated as a science and the people on the other side. his wife suzanne is here as well, who believes, mr. chairman, that you can use this newfound science, not only to convict the guilty, but also to protect the innocent. steve redding. >> my name is steve r exdding, and i am senior assistant county hearing and our office serves

approximately 1.1 million people. i want to thank the members of the judiciary committee for inviting me here. i especially want to thank senator clobatur who was county attorney eight years. from the moment she was elected county attorney, she fully understood the dna testing importance in carrying out our duty to convict the guilty and protect the innocent. i also want to thank mike freeman, my present boss for his unwavering support in d.n.a. issues both now and for the eight years that he was county attorney. d.n.a. has solved many cold cases in the united states. hi the good fortune to prosecute the first two cold cases in the united states in 1992 and '93. one of the rape homicides of a recent college graduate and the

second was the assault of a milwaukee young woman by a serial rapist. none of those young men will be released from prison. .

there was not sufficient amount of biological material to test. 13 of those cases produced john doe profiles. 13 of those cases produced a hit to a convicted offender. ten of those hits were to convicted fauvenders with previous sex list riss. three were without a history. of those 13 three have been convicted, five have been charged. in two cases we are still looking for the victim. one is still under investigation and two turned out the d.n.a. was from a consense sexual partner. these demonstrate how fruitful it can be to test this group of cases and this type of case. additional grant funding similar to the project that i am working on now can yield similar results.

one year ago it became mandatory to test all cases where the victim said her perpetrator was a stranger. we need more funding. years ago we provided training to inexperienced prosecutors. that training was crucial. however, in mothse cases it is no longer available. in sexual sault cases evidence is more often performed these days by a specially trained nurse. perpetrators know about d.n.a. and are taking steps to avoid leaving d.n.a. one perpetrator car jacked and assaulted the victim and ejack lated in her pants. he took the pants. he thought he took the only evidence that could tie him to the assault. however, the nurse who was

taking the evidence from her in a careful interview revealed that he had talked on her cell phone. she obtained her cell phone, she swabbed the sever of the cell phone. that d.n.a. profile was entered into the convicted offender data base and it hit to this man. her training and innovation made that arrest possible. he is charged and he is waiting trial. for similar reasons police and prosecutor training would enhance investigations. there needs to be more cooperation between police and prosecutors. if there's anything i've learned as a prosecutor, it is that when police and prosecutors work together we improve outcomes significantly. teamwork on cold cases is especially crucial. in many places, a road bloc exists to this cooperation and i have detailed what that is in my smigses and suggested solutions to overcome it.

the crime solving ability of our national data bases is amazing. in september of 1989 a young woman was stabbed to death. as part of a cold case homicide project, minneapolis police sergeant found evidence and that evidence was submitted for d.n.a. testing. that evidence hit to a man whose only felony conviction was for drunk driving. senator cobetur was largely responsible which for the law which made repeat drunk driving a felony. the crime never would have been solved but for the fact that he was placed into the convicted offender data base. this is a magnificent example where the law of unintended consequences led to a terrific outcome. i am fortunate have to have been a part of this. i have made suggestions to this committee. i believe the use of d.n.a.

typing to identified rapists can be furthered enhanced and additional rapist ks be brought to justice. i outlined in my submissions a number of areas that can help us. i want to thank you for inviting me to testify before you today and i look forward to continuing my work on maximizing the use of d.n.a. technology in this area. >> thank you very much. our next witness has been the director of victims of crime. she joined the organization in 1991. she has written and spoken extensively on policy issues affecting victims of crime. recently served on the national advisory committee on violence against women. i have a note that she received her law degree from georgetown

university law center, and some of us on this committee of course find that -- never mind. we actually have two of us on this committee. one other besides myself who graduated from georgetown. please go ahead. >> thank you, chairman lay hi. good morning, chairman, ranking member sessions and other members of the committee. again, i'm public policy director of the national center for victims of crime which is a national nonprofit resource and advocacy organization that will soon celebrate our 25th year of champning if rights and interest of crime. our members include providers and professionals at the state, federal, and local levels. we have a long history of advocating for sexual assault vict nls and working to promote the use of d.n.a. evidence and i appreciate the opportunity to appear this morning. sexual assault victims call our

help line every day. when they can't find the help or information they need at the local level. they remind us as debby smith did this morning that undergoing a rape exam can be intrusive, violating, exhausting, and confusing, especially when it's not conducted by a specially trained sexual assault nurse examiner. once the exam is complete, victims often have no idea what happens to the rape kit. many mistakenly assume that every kit is sent to the lab immediately, so they're very confused as to why they can't get information about their case. if they later learn that the kit was never sent to the lab and no one tells them why, they become very upset and discouraged. victims whose kits are lost or destroyed before processing are especially angry. one recent caller spoke at length about her frustration that after she had done all she could to promote the investigation, no one else seemed to care about bringing the offender to justice.

another recent caller was outraged that rape kits from her offender's previous victims had languished for years without being tested. she is ready to sue state and local officials because she is convinced that if those kits had been processed, her rapist would have been caught and she would never have become a victim. our members confirm what we hear from victims. that many jurisdictions are not processing all appropriate rape kits and that there are substantial delays in many jurisdictions around the country. now, moving forward, we would like to appear today to offer a clear policy solution to the rape kit backlog but before we can do that we need more information. we need to know more about whether the problem is a lack of understanding about the invest gative power of d.n.a. evidence or a lack of funding to process evidence, or a lack of will to investigate and prosecute more sexual sault cases. each of those barriers would

call for a different policy solution. we also need to know if there is any benefit from testing every rape kit even if the identity of the defendant is not at issue. some jurisdictions have cleared or are in the process of clearing their rape kit backlogs by doing just that, testing every kit. their experience could give us the information to know whether that's our path forward. but at this point, we are reluctant to recommend that every kit be tested. if a defendant admits to the sexual conduct but claims consent, there may be no evidentry value in processing the kit. after all, if he is later convict d, his d.n.a. will be captured and submitted into the data base. because our capacity to process d.n.a. and other forensic evidence is limited to require testing of every sexual assault kit even those unlikely to result in probetive evidence will inevitably reduce or delay

testing in other types of cases. many victims of other crimes also have a compelling interest in the prompt testing of forensic evidence. forensic d.n.a. testing could help close many open homicide cases. burglary victims can bn fit from the use of forensic evidence. families with missing persons could benefit if more unidentified remains were processed. until our capacity for d.n.a. testing grows, any prioritization of a class of cases should be crafted carefully. in the meantime, there is much congress can do to improve the treatment of rape victims as forensic evidence is gathered and processed. first, congress could provide additional support for sexual assault nurse examiners to ensure compassionate treatment and preservation of evidence. we also recommend a creation of a sexual assault victims d.n.a. bill of rights such as california has which gives rape victims the right to know

whether their rape kit has been processed and whether an assailant has been identified. we also urge you to support increased public awareness that sexual assault victims have the right to a free forensic exam even if they have not yet made the decision to report the crime. victims typically learn about the forensic exam from the police or the rape crisis center but only a fraction of victims will report to the police and many victims delay calling the rape crisis center until it's too late to capture that forensic evidence. we applaud this committee for its repeated efts to bring justice to sexual assault victims and other victims of crime and to senator franken for bringing attention to this important issue. the national center for victims of crime looks forward to working with you in crafting legislation to use d.n.a. evidence, bring a just response to victims of crime. thank you.

>> very thank you very much. the chairman stepped out briefly so i have the honor to introduce the next witness. stephanie is the commander of the miami dade police crime laboratory bureau. as head of the lab she oversees forensic labs that test control substances, trace evidence, biological evidence, firearms, and tool marks. she is a nationally recognized leader in forensic science and has lectured before the american prosecutors research institutes, the national institute of justice, and the international association chiefs of police. she has also taught as an adjunct professor at the international research institute at florida international university and is a current board member of the american society of crime laboratory directors. she received her bachelors of science from florida university and her master's from florida international university. >> good morning, members of the

committee. as stated, my name is stephanie, i am the crime laboratory director at miami dade police department and i am responsible for the managing operation of a full service laboratory. in addition to my duties as crime laboratory director i also sit on the board of the american society of crime laboratory directors which represents the interests of over 500 crime laboratory directors throughout the united states and overseas and plays an active role in overseeing the credibility and activity of labts. i am honored to be asked to speak to you about ensuring the effective use of d.n.a. evidence to solve rape cases nationwide. the role of crime laboratories is twofold. to provide investigative leads to remove dangerous offenders, or exonerate innocent suspects and to provide the results and interpretations resulting from these investigations in a court of law. at the end of the day, there

are more cases that could be worked. cases must be prioritized. generally speaking, when faced with a decision on how to prioritize these cases the highest priority is given to the cases in which the subject is the greatest threat to society. crime laboratories are faced with insufficient person until, funding to meet the expectations of investigators courts and sipts sense. forensic science is becoming an increasingly important component. crime laboratories also provide scientific analysis in controlled substances, firearms, late nt prints. nond.n.a. comprize almost 90%, a significant backlog exists in all area of forensic science not just dna and the timely digs disposition is impacted by a lack of funding to support the needs of forensic laboratories nationwide. as a result of the

glamourization of forensic science, d.n.a. requests are made of the crime laboratory because the jury expects the evidence to be tested. there are many, many requests that are made of the lab to perform testing when the identity is not in question. if identity is not in question, why drain precious laboratory resources. prosecutors need to explain that television drama is just that, a dramtization of fictitious events. in a perfect world with unlimited resources, every lab could analyze every sample from every case. however, the reality is quite different. there are resources used nationwide that preclude the analysis of every item and case. each case is evaluated separately and each case is different. for example, if a consense wull case is submitted with an underage female and her adult boyfriend should this receive the same level of attention as a stranger rape? crime laboratories do not treat these the same way. we understand the value of

analyzing sexual assault evidence. this does not mean that a consense wull case would never be analyzed but it does mean that it's different. if crime laboratories were to examine every case, then er case would go unexamined. the primary challenge that faces crime laboratories, backlogs exist. there is no single explanation that defines what makes up a backlog. is it cases in-house that have not been opened? cases in progress but not yet complete? cases never submitted to the laboratory? scrime laboratories can only manage the cases that they know about. in our experience, the written policy allows the miami dade police department to manage the backlog. this translates to a continual juggling of priorities to meet the needs of the judicial system. this juggling is not performed in an arbitrary manner. there are defined priorities for all cases that enter a crime laboratory. in coming priorities are the violent crimes. however, the cases that go to trial fasters are the property

crimes. the question is then posed as to why valuable resources are then spent on property crimes. d.n.a. revealed that 52% of violent offenders had a burglary in their past. the idea here then is prevention. the earlier these offenders are removed from society, the less opportunity they have to progress to violent crimes. cold case crimes are also important. and congress has authorized funded to reexamine cold cases. the miami dade police department has pursued funding and has successfully obtained over $1.1 million to reexamine cold case filing crimes. of the first 100 cold sexual crimes cases, 68 d.n.a. profiles were uploaded into coduss. 32 hits were made. training is an essential component from the collection and submission of evidence to

the analysis reporting and testimony. the miami dade police department crime laboratory bureau provides training to investigators, attorneys, and judges. and what every law enforcement officers should no about d.n.a., explains the importance of d.n.a. evidence. this information should be common knowledge among law enforcement and criminal justice person until. training crick lal should include as a matter of routine procedures for the proper collection. the management of case work submitted to a crime laboratory is not only a law enforcement problem. it is an issue that must be addressed within the entire judicial system. submission of every case to the crime laboratory with the expectation that every case can be worked is unrealistic. every case needs to be evaluated separately and not every case needs to be analyzed. in addition, labts do not have the resources to evaluate every case or every sample from every case. the answer does not lie in the

hands of the criminalists across the country who analyze these on the daily basis. the responsibility lies in the hands of the entire judicial system. if cases are not going to be prosecuted, why expend it had resources? the efforts welcome back a crime laboratory should focus on how to produce results in a timely manner where forensic science can provide critical information. there is no one size fits all approach. this must be fluid to meet the demands of the judicial system. i appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee today. thank you. >> thank you very much. and our last witness is jan sepech. a an advavo cat of d.n.a. test forg all.

she led the effort that eventually resulted in the adoption of kay's law in new mexico. along with her family she founded d.n.a. saves. a nonprofit organization devoted to the passage of arrestee testing laws across the country. her work has been featured in america's most wanted. she has been honored by governor bill richardson as outstanding new mexico woman of 2007, inducted into the new mexico women's hall of fame. not withstanding all the honors you've received, i'm sure you wish the reason was not there. thank you for what you have done and thank you for your testimony. >> chairman lay hi and members of the committee, my name is jan, and i so greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about the very important issue of d.n.a., forensic d.n.a. testing and the

related backlogs. i'm here as the mother of a murdered daughter and i'm also here representing the surviving parents coalition. the surviving parents coalition are parents of children who have been murdered or abducted and sexually assaulted. and as a group, we fight for laws that will help protect our children and young people. forensic d.n.a. is vite toll solving crimes against children, particularly as children are often not able to put into words those crimes that were committed against them. so as such, supportive d.n.a. is a legislative priority for the coalition. in august of 2003, my beloved daughter katie was a vyvashese, joyful, loving graduate student at new mexico university. she was attacked just outside of her home in a supposedly very safe neighborhood she was brutely raped, sodomized, strangled, set on fire, and her

body left in an abandoned dump site. i have no doubt it is never easy for any parent to bury their child. but the horror and the pain of losing katies in this violent manner is beyond description. there was no strong suspects in katie's murder, but katie fought so hard for her life that she had the skin and blood-ore attacker underneath her finger nails which contained his d.n.a. i know now how lucky we were that katie's murder was such a high profile case because the district attorney didn't want to send that d.n.a. sample to our crime lab because our backlog there was about a year. so she used her own precious budget to outsource it to a private d.n.a. lab. that profile was sent to codus and i cannot describe for you

what broad hope this brought to our family because we knew who killed our daughter. all we had to find was a match on the offender data base. there are so many families across this country that also have this bright hope but there are so many more who are waiting. waiting. and it pains me to think of those thousands of rape kits that are sitting on shelves around this country. because when i think of those rape kits, i don't think of evidence. i see faces. i see faces like that of my daughter katie and i feel the pain of the mothers who have buried their daughters and are waiting for justice. and they deserve justice. they deserve to have evidence in their cases tested, analyzed, and uploaded. because without testing there may be no hope for justice.

and without justice, these monsters remain free on our streets to vibtmies again and again, to rape again, to murder again, to cause this pain again. this is unconscionable. when i learned of the d.n.a. evidence in katie's case, i said this man was such a monster that surely he will commit another crime, he will be arrested for something else. they will take his d.n.a. we will know who he is. we will stop him from killing again. and that's when i learned that while every state takes finger prints from individuals arrested for crimes, most states did not allow for d.n.a. to be taken upon felony arrests. i was stunned. we do not allow our law enforcement to check the d.n.a. data base for a possible match before allowing people accused of the most hainnuss crimes in our society, murder and rape, to be released on bail. we don't even bother to check the data baste. we just release them.

that's when i began to research and study the issue of taking d.n.a. upon arrest. based on my research, i became a national advocate for taking d.n.a. upon felony arrest and my husband and i founded d.n.a. saves which is a nonprofit association which advocates for d.n.a. laws nationwide. we know we can't bring katie back but we can work to change laws so that we may be able to prevent this horrible pain from being visited upon other parents. in 2006, we fought for katie's law in the state of new mexico. it's a law that requires that d.n.a. be taken upon felony arrested. it went into effect january 1 at mid night, 2007. since that date, new mexico's program has registered 104 matches of unsolved crimes to 86 individual arrestee d.n.a. profiles. that's in less than three years

in a state with a total population of right at 2 million people. one hour and 14 minutes after this law went into effect in new mexico, the first arrestee was swabbed in the detention center. it matched a double homicide. that man, james misako has since been convicted. just three months after katie was murdered, a man named gaberill was arrested for breaking into the home of two young women. we didn't have katie's law in new mexico at that time so his d.n.a. was not taken. it was over three years later that he was finally convicted of burglary, incarcerated and his d.n.a. was taken. and that d.n.a. matched the d.n.a. that katie fought so hard to provide. as she was being murdered. he subsequently confessed, pled guilty, and will spend the rest of his life in prison.

if new mexico has required a d.n.a. sample for all felony arrested in november 2003, katie's murder would have been solved three years sooner. three years that her family prayed for justice, and waited to know that this killer was off the streets. and i have to tell you that during that time i've been told by the district attorney that over $200,000 was spent investigating her murder, $200,000 that would have been saved. but, more importantly, this man would have been in custody three years sooner, unable to victimize other young women. but we cannot consider one side of the data base because the data base has two sides. the offender d.n.a. data base and also the evidence in the data base. without a strong d.n.a. data base of offenders and arrestees, we will necessarily limit the possibility of match that is can be made.

and conversely, without testing of the evidence, without uploading the evidence in a timely manner, we limit the match that is can be made. in the past six years, i have come to meet so many families who have lost their daughters as i have, so many families who have had their children abducted and sexually assaulted, and a great number of rape victims. we owe it to these people to have their evidence tested in a timely manner. but, more importantly, we owe it to our country, to our citizens, to stop these monsters in their tracks before they rape and murder again and again. we have been given a wonderful scientific tool in d.n.a. that is ultimately the truth. and this truth can not only solve crimes, it can prevent crimes. and in doing so, it can save

precious lives and exonerate the innocent. we must do everything we can to make full use of this invaluable scientific tool. to do otherwise is criminal. thank you. >> thank you very much. let me -- and thank you for your courage in coming here to speak. you and ms. smith put -- it takes us far from these statistics and brings it to reality. those of us who had the privilege to serve as prosecutors before we were here in the senate know what the a lot of these cases are like. we see the personal side of it. they're not just statistics. they're human faces on crimes, the victims, what it does to families and communities, and

what you do, both of you in speaking out, tell all of us what that is. so thank you. i want to ask a question of commander solof and mr. redding. in a recent national institute of justice report found that one reduction simply getting that evidence from the police department to the lab, the study recommended additional training of law enforcement personal in the creation of uniformed procedures for submitting evidence as well as improved training for police officers on the benefits and use of forensic analysis. i'll start with you, commander. in your experience, what role has training played in educating law enforcement person nel about the importance of d.n.a. testing and how do you, and how about prioritizing those cases where d.n.a.

analysis is most useful? >> let me address the second part of your question first, in prioritization. i think the prioritization is something that has to occur in order to, as i said in my statement, in order to remove the offenders that are the greatest threat to society. so if you have a homicide and sexual assault that come in with a stranger offender versus a burglary of somebody's car, most citizens are understand the burglaries because that's what is common to society. however, the greatest threat would be the rapist or the murderer. so the prioritization is pretty clear. in laboratories nationwide. >> should there be a uniformed standard nationwide on that? >> as far as -- well, i think there should be a uniformed standard as far as all of the

offenders that are threatening, yes. for the violent offenders, absolutely. i think all crime laboratory directors believe that, in my experience, and anybody i've ever spoken to, understand that those are the highest priority. i don't think there's any laboratory that prioritizes as a case is submitted. >> what about a national training program? would that be helpful? as you go from somewhere as large as dade county or hampton county down to very small jurisdictions, which are actually the majority of jurisdictions. >> i'm sorry, sir? your question is? >> well, would a national training program on rape kits and d.n.a. evidence, would that help? >> i think the national training program would certainly help from the perspective of law enforcement and that you have a lot of law enforcement, especially as you're saying in small

agencies, that aren't aware necessarily of what d.n.a. can do. so i think that the education and training is on the side of what can we, to know what to collect torks know what to submit, one thing that is very important is that you have one chance at the crime scene to collect everything. i9 doesn't mean that everything is submit d to the laboratory or analyzed right away but it does mean it's preserved in the event it needs to be analyzed at a later date. so i do think there should be some kind of training across the nationwide as far as what the capabilities are. i do think there is a lack of understanding whether you have -- i forget the expression, but the old-school police that believe that the investigation should solve every crime and the realization that what physical evidence can do to solve the case is one side of it. and then the new recruits, it should be mandated that they go through some sort of training. >> before my time runs out, you

see it after it gets into place. you see it from the prosecutor's point of view. what do you think about having uniformed standards for when the d.n.a. gets turned over to labs? national training? i mean, are these things helpful? can you fall into a one size fits all? >> i don't think you can fall into a one size fits all, but i do think that some type of national standard or some type of best practices would be something that would be very valuable to law enforcement. even within our county, i've noticed and seen significant differences between the police departments in what they choose to send to the laboratory and the police departmentst in what the people who collect the evidence actually collect. and we've done some work to try to bring those standards together so that we have an even policy across our law enforcement agencies in

hennepin county. but i do think that kind of training would be helpful. i get calls all the time from police officers who are not aware of the capabilities of d.n.a. typing. it has changed drassically in the 20 years that i've been working on it. so law enforcement needs to understand that where as 20 years ago we needed a significantly large sample to get d.n.a. from, recently we for example obtained d.n.a. from a murder victim by simply swabbing the area that we believed that the perpetrator had grabbed this victim and we were able to, the lab was able to swab that area where he had put his hands on her and come up with a d.n.a. profile to confirm who we thought that was. >> my time is up. i want to yield to senator sessions and then turn the gavel over to senator clobetur. and she may have gathered from

some of the press there are infortunately several things going on at the senate right at the moment. and in case i do not get back, i want to thank every one of you for your testimony. even as difficult, especially for two of you, how difficult it must be to give it. >> thank you. thank all of you for your testimony. and ms. smith and sms sepich particularly because of the description that you've given 06 real life situations that are so painful. let me ask with regard to ms. smith, the seven years you waited there before there was a hit, it strikes me that you have to have a data base to check the person against. was that a factor in the delay in getting the identification of the person who assaulted you? >> yes, it was.

because with my case, all of this was just beginning, so it was kind of playing catch-up. so trying to get the data base set up and all of that. and so that was, there was really nobody at fault at the time that my case sat. there's nobody at fault now other than the fact that we have a tremendous amount of kits that we just need to figure out the best way to get it done. because i think that everybody is on the same page in wanting to get it done. it's just that we've got to figure out a way to get it done. >> i think that's good advice to us. we need to figure out how to do this correctly. you described that you led an effort, i believe, to pass a law for new mexico. and that law turned out to be the reason, it seems to me,

from your testimony, that you identified the person who had killed your daughter. in other words, they did the test on this person's, when he was arrested three years later for a burglary, that got the hit. is that correct? >> senator sessions, actually, they could have had the hit three months after she was murdered. that's when he was arrested for burglary pfplt but we didn't have the law at that time. it was three and a half years after she was murdered that he was ultimately convicted and incarcerate. the law didn't go into effect until after about a month after the hit was made. but we've had tremendous effect since we've had the law go into effect in new mexico. >> but the point, one of the points we should all remember is that this individual was not arrested for another rape. he was arrested for burglary. >> that's correct. >> and that is what told the

tale. and, mr. redding, you solved a case in which when you got a hit on a person who was arrested for d.w.i. which is unrelated. based on your experience, and you've been at this for a number of years, do you think that the 20 states who now currently, i understand, test on arrest, that that is good public policy? >> i do think that's good public policy. i think that the larger you can get the convicted offender data base as well as the larger that you can get the data base which contains evidence from crimes, the more hits you're going to get. so i think that's good public policy. i see no constitutional barrier to that being enacted into law in other states. and i know that the trend is in that direction. again, that will cause significant uptick in the number of samples which are

submitted to go into the data base, but i think that that can be handled and i think that it should be handled. >> with regard to assault victims, you made reference to, several of you did, rape victims. even if they know the person who attacked them, it seems to me that either upon that person's arrest or from the d.n.a. itself, a test should be run because maybe the victims may not know that this person has a tendency. you know, is likely to assault someone else. how would you discuss the value of even testing and entering this information based on a days where you know the victim? >> when the offender is known to the victim, we know that so

many sex offenders are repeat offenders, and your ability to upload that person's sample will depend on there being convicted or in many states arrested. at this point, if you were to run a rape kit on a known defendant, that information would not be uploaded into codus because you have a known defendant. it would only then be a -- >> that would be a policy error. would it not? >> when we're talking about greatly expanding our demand on codas, i think we do have to be careful going forward. if he is arrested, in about half of the states, would go into codas and if he is later convicted we would get that in. and there you're right we could start to see patterns. >> i see. one quick question.

if a rape victim is examined properly, do you have to do multiple d.n.a. checks to make sure that you are getting a good information? in other words, how many actual readings and how much d.n.a. do you have to gather per victim? >> when the victim responds to the rape center there's a standard protocol that's followed for collection. there's a standard number of swabs and slides, et cetera, that are taken at the time. when we analyze the evidence in house, we analyze it once. unless it's required to be retested for court purposes, either the original analysis is not there or for whatever reason, the analysis is done once. >> it could be multiple swabs. >> correct. >> and you analyze each swab?

>> we would analyze each swab. correct. >> if you knew, if the person was arrested and you did it, you would only have to have one swab or specimen of that person's d.n.a. to put it into the data base. is that right? >> well, i think, if i'm understanding you correctly, the information if it's obtained, like if we were to obtain a male profile from one of the e items, we wouldn't need to test multiple items to put that in. however, when we do test the rape kit, we do test multiple items but the profile is only entered once. does that satisfy your question? >> i think so. i just think, if you identify the victim -- the perpetrator, you know the perpetrator, i think it could be put in and might not cost quite as much as if you were having to obtain

the sample from the rape victim. >> well, we need the sample from the victim to compare against, in the interpretation, to know what information is there. sometimes every case is different. sometimes in the details of the case necessitate comparison to the victim. so we always take the victim standard as part of the rape treatment kit. hour, i can tell you in our experience, we work every case even if the subject is known we still work it. obviously for prosecution reasons. but in florida, we put the standard in. so i would take the subject's standard and that would go into the data base. and we don't know when he is arrested. in the laboratory setting we don't have any knowledge of the disposition unless we happen to testify. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much, senator sessions. again, thank you for your moving testimony. and thank you for coming

forward. ms. smith, you mentiond in your testimony, i think your written testimony, about -- and your story about the need for well trained nurses and how critical that is for collecting the evidence and making sure that victims don't feel revictimized when the received collected. do you have any thoughts about what we could do to better train these nurses in this area as well as get more medical students, nursing students to go into this area and be trained? >> yes. there is a wonderful program, sexual assault nurse examiners, that are trained specifically to take this exam. in my case, my doctor was actually reading the instructions as we went along. that's not real reassuring when you're going through an exam like this. but the sexual assault nurse examiners are not only trained how to deal, how to get information that the average doctor may not even think

about, but she is also trained to know how to do those first a emotional needs of her patient. she, a very good program, you will have rooms that are set aside so that the victim can go into a room, these sexual assault nurse examiners, that is all they're there for. there's not -- it's a one on one examination. it's not with me i had three different nurses asking me questions and then a separate doctor. and that -- >> so it builds troust just have one. >> exactly. plus you have all the confusion that just -- and she knows how. she is trained or he is trained to know exactly what questions to ask, how to ask them. and i can't tell you the difference that that can make. >> thank you. speaking of that kind of coordination and efficiency, mr. redding, you talked about

how there needs to be better cooperation and coordination with prosecutors and law enforcement with these labs, that the labs don't just serve the police, they also serve prosecutors. do you want to talk about why that's important an if you think there's something that we can do to enhance that cooperation. >> that is very important, as i've indicated, not just in cold d.n.a. cases but any time a prosecutor and the police cooperate during the investigation and the pre-charging aspect of a case, uniformly, that case turns out to be better and we have better results from that case. one of the things that happens and that i've -- i realize needed to be corrected was that the only person who was being advised of a hit was the police officers, and i received a call some years ago from our lab saying what happened to these 25 cases of homicides and rapes? and i didn't know anything about most of them.

so i contacted the police. we began together to investigate those crimes, and we were able to charge and convict a number of those people. so i have now set up in our jurisdiction contestimony prains notice from the laboratory to me as well as the police department. and that enables me to get involved immediately if that case, if it's important. and it's important because prosecutors can teach and are teaching across the country interrogation techniques for police officers which are different in cold cases than they are in the regular investigation, and if they're investigated differently and if the interrogation gezz differently, we have a much greater chance of success. >> and again, along these lines of efficiency, we all want to get these rape kits tested. there's no doubt about that. from the previous hearings we've had on this issue. and we also want to get you more funding to do that. at the same time, i know as a

local prosecutor there's nothing worse than a mabbed date without the funding. leave the money behind. right? so what i would like to know and hear from i gezz you, mr. redding, and ms. stoilof is how we can best use these resources. are there certain kits that you would argue shouldn't be tested or should they all be tested? what are the criteria you think that we should look at as we go forward? >> well, in sexual assault cases i agree that there is some value to testing acquaitance rape kits. obviously, laboratories have to prioritize and they must prioritize and almost all laboratories do. our's certainly do. >> it's not just d.n.a. there's even other kinds of evidence. there's more than d.n.a. >> yes. there are many types of other evidence. and the laboratories and prosecutors have to deal with statute of limbations questions and those kinds of thing that is arise. but i do think that as we move

forward, we're going to discover and we're going to be able to askern what the value is of whether or not we should test every sexual assault kit. in the grant that i'm working on now, we're evolving that opinion as we go along. our grant expires in june. we are looking now to see with whether or not in acquaitance rape cases that man who is identified by the victim is in fact in the offender data base. if he is in the data base, then there is not the significant reason to test that case nor that kit because if he's in the data base his profile would have already hit to an unsolved case. so we don't need to do that. that eliminates a significant number of the acquaitance rape cases that we would think that need or there's value in testing. >> do you want to add to that?

>> i would say i agree with what steve said. the prioritization certainly needs to be anything, any stranger rape case. and as i said earlier, when uffer a written prioritization policy that's clear what's going to happen when a case comes into the laboratory. the issue becomes if a stranger rape comes in and it's not addressed, that's what should be handled by each laboratory correctly. and the point that steve made about getting the profile and data baste. even in our experience, if the case is negative meaning there's no profile obtained, we will still work the standard that's submitted of the subject and put that into a data base. so we will do everything we can to put the profile in there. and sometimes it means thrt no evidence to test but we'll submit the standard and put that in as well. >> so you want the test. you want the kit done. but once we get there and you want them preserved and there

to use. but there may be an argument for prioritizing them, and clearly in all the stranger rape cases. >> that's correct. >> thank you very much. senator grassley. >> thank you, madam chairman. and thanks to all of you for your testimony. i'm just going to ask a few questions of ms. hawley. i've had the opportunity to work with her before on the restitution of victims of crime. so i was glad to have senator franken ask me, if i would join him as the lead co-sponsor of this justice for survivors of sexual assault act because i think that this would cut down on backlog of untested rape cases. now, you seem to raise the question as you discussed in your testimony the need to know more about the backlog of untested kits before you would have a concrete recommendation

to address the problem. i understand your concerns that we test d.n.a. samples effectively and efficiently. so a few questions along that line. do you believe a requirement that state and local governments provide statistics to federal government on untested rape kits? on the backlog thereof, would be useful? >> i think having that information would definitely be useful. my concern is i'm not sure how difficult it is to require states to provide that. nij and others have been trying to quantify prsicely the existing d.n.a. data base for many years. and so i would just want to be sure that we understand what the barriers have been to getting precise figures before we demand that of states. i certainly agree that we need that information, and we need to figure out how we can best

get it. i think part of the problem has been, as i believe ms. stoilof said earlier, sometimes you have kits that are in the local law enforcement office and you have other kits that are in a lab. it might be a local lab, a private lab, a state lab. i believe one of the problems has been identifying all those locations, maybe some are still kept at the hospital and haven't been forwarded. so identifying what exactly do we want to count as part of the backlog and where exactly can we get those numbers. we've had problems before where i know many of lawmakers have tried to get precise figures from their state. they might be told by the state lab we have no backlog. they may be true at the lab level but if you were to go around to all of the local law enforcement, you might find there are quite a few samples that haven't been forwarded. so that's my concern. not that we definitely -- we

definitely need the information but we should figure out how realistic can we be that we will have a precise number. >> ok. well, will the annual reporting requirements assist in reducing and eliminating the backlog by you think essentially shaming jurisdictions into testing more rape kits? >> i think that any time that we can use real numbers to draw attention to a problem and then have real numbers to measure the effectiveness of agencies in addressing that back log, that's clearly an important step. >> what do you recommend for the sort of information required of the states or from the states? >> i'm sorry? can you restate? >> what sort of information should be required from the states that we're trying to get the statistics on? >> i think states should be given clear guidance as to what

should be considered part of the d.n.a. backlog and then urged to measure that backlog. so states should be given guidance that we want not only the backlog that exists at your state level labs and your local labs but your private labs. we want not only the number of samples that are in your major cities but also your smaller jurisdiction law enforcement offices. >> i'm going to move on to another question. in some states, rape victims are required to pay for their own rape kits and seek reimbursement after the kit has been processed. my judgment is rape victims should never have to pay for the cost of the kit. evidence collection is obviously an integral part of law enforcement. this survivors of sexual assault act includes a provision that requires states

to be responsible for full up-front costs of the kit and examination. do you think that the current law allowing for reimbursement of rape kit costs by states as opposed to full payment up front has caused any rape victims to avoid having rape kit collected? >> well, i am not aware of any cases where that has happened that would likely be a result. most states do not require victims to pay for the rape kit and then seek reimbursement. most states pay for it up front and off through their crime victim compensation program. under the compensation program the very fact of requesting a forensic exam counts as reporting for purposes of having the costs of that exam reimbursed. in most states, the victim will never see a bill for the forensic exam, the hospital will send it directly to the

compensation program or the other government payment source. >> i thought, maybe i've got it wrong, but i thought that there was more requirement to pay and it was holding people back. so if it's not a problem, i think we have a problem in getting word out that that's not the case. >> we definitely do have a problem getting word out. and part of this is because this system has been evolving in many years. so it could be that previous victims or previous advocates have not, are not aware of the change in procedures. states have made a real effort, especially through mandates under the violence against women act, to change the way that they are reimbursing or that, to change the way that they are paying for forensic exams. but a lot of that change is recent. >> thank you. thank you, madam chairman. >> thank you very much, senator grassley. senator franken. >> thank you, madam chair, and

i want to thank you and chairman lay hi in your leadership on this issue. i want to thank each of our witnesses, ms. smith, ms. seipech, for your courage and strength, and mr. redding and ms. stol of for your expertise and professionalism and ms. haulie for your advocacy. last month i introduced a bill joined by my colleague senator grassly and senator hatch and senator feinstein that would create financial incentives for jurisdictions to process the rape kit backlogs and remain prompt. the truth is i think this is one of those issues in congress where we all can agree on the big picture. rape is a hainnuss crime and we need to provide our law

enforcement agencies with everything they need to prevent it. and bring perpetrators to juss dis. so i just want to ask a few questions on this front. mr. redding, your testimony you said there was a need for improved infrastructure and lab capabilities so that d.n.a. evidence can improcessed as quickly as possible. the national institute of justice study revealed that six out of ten police departments surveyed, lacked computerized evidence tracking systems.ñi they rely on paper tracking systems. and it's no surprise that when some police departments review their inventories they discover stores ofñi untested kits. this append in detroit and los angeles. mr. redding and ms. stoilof, how do your departments track d.n.a. evidence and what kinds of resources are available to help police departments set up

the kind of tracking systems that they require? . . there. i don't have the same kind of access in some of the smaller suburbs. there needs to be a uniform best practices, recommend to jurisdictions as to how long they hold on to evidence and how

long they hold on to police reports. even some places, police reports are being destroyed within seven years and that is troubling to me as a prosecutor when we have expanded the statute of limitations, like we have in minnesota where we have a situation to go back to 1991 to prosecute these cases, but the police reports have been destroyed. we need a best practices about how long to keep evidence, how to keep track of that evidence and how long to keep something as basic as police reports. so it's very important and it's crucial. >>ñi we have over 35 municipalities in miami-dade county, so i can only address what happens with our agency. i have no idea how they track evidence in the other agencies. we do have an in-house system

which is a laboratory information management system. what that does is actually track. we know what we have in-house. as far as what's in the property room, even i don't know that from years ago. we have been doing cold cases since 2001, reviewing cold sexual assaults and cold homicides. we have pretty much covered everything with our own agency as far asñi what's been collect and stored. unfortunately, i agree with what steve said, there are issues that need to be addressed so there are uniform best practices with other agencies, too. >> i want to highlight the experience in some of the jurisdictions that have chosen as a default to test all or nearly all rape kits. these jurisdictions have seen their arrest rates for rape increase by as much as 30 percentage points and had thousands of cold hits. our national -- our average

national arrest rape in jurisdictions that have implemented a test-all kits policy climb up to 70%, three times the national average. what, in your mind, is keeping all jurisdictions from moving toward this model? >> i believe that there are three barriers as i outlined in my testimony. n.i.v. report indicated a big one is that local law enforcement agencies don't always understand the evidentiary value of d.n.a. evidence, that it can be used to solve crimes. so many law enforcement agencies in that n.i.j. survey indicated they were not forwarding kits for testing where there was not already a suspect. so that indicates one problem. if a local law enforcement agency has heard that the lab is overloaded or already knows that

it will take more than a year to get something back from a lab, they may not be forwarding information, because they know they can't get it in a timely fashion. and that would be directly related to funding to increase the capacity and reduce the lag time. but a third issue could be lack of will. we know in too many places, law enforcement agencies make a judgment as to the importance or value or credibility of the victim based on what they think a rape victim ought to act like. when talking to our members about the problems that they see, many of them highlighted the need to train law enforcement about sensitive response to victims of sexual assault so they can better understand why a rape victim may be presenting with what's called a flat affect, no emotion, no

longer hysterical. that law enforcement needs to be trained to know that does not necessarily mean she was not a victim. i would prioritize that as well. >> i'm out of time. i want to make one little point on the reimbursement issue. i want to highlight we have heard from advocates like human rights watch, that people are sleeping through the cracks and that some women pay for their kits up front and that some of them are never repaid the full costs. and my bill would close those loopholes. thank you, madam chair. >> thank you very much. senator whitehouse. >> thank you for your extraordinarily powerful testimony. thank you for your voice on behalf of victims across the country and thank you for your

service in law enforcement. clearly the science of d.n.a. has speed far, far ahead. my first realization was a murder case where we were able to get d.n.a. off a beer bottle that the perpetrator of the crime had taken a swig out of during the course of his time in the home of the murder victim. and i suspect it's rocketted forward in the years since then. so i think it's a very valuable tool. and i assume that all of you would support mandatory d.n.a. testing of violent criminals. >> yes, i certainly would, senator. anyway that we can get the d.n.a. from a person who has committed crimes and been arrested as i said, get into a

data base of convicted offenders along with a larger data base of crimes that have been tested. when they are searched against each other, we get more hits, the bigger they are. >> the record reflect that all five heads were nodding in agreement. yeah, because at that point, you're no longer confirming evidence and using it as a tool of proof, it becomes an investigatingtive tool against a larger audience and adds to the d.n.a. samples. in terms of prioritizing rape kits, does the priorityization need to take place more at the lab or more at the investigative side in the police and prosecute's office? i don't know the answer to the question, or do we need priorityization at both points? >> at least from my point it is

not at the lab. the labs that i deal with are properly prioritizing. the problems is the priority isation within the police department and some within the prosecutor's department. >> that's the area? >> that's the area. and when we have changed that and we get more kits, we do get better results. and i want to briefly comment on police making that determination about whether a victim's credible or not. many victims are most vulnerable victims are homeless and a chemical dependency problem or some other problem, possibly mentally ill problem and so they are preyed on and we need to get those victims d.n.a. results into our data base as well. they can be linked to other cases and we have done that on a

number of occasions and been able to prosecute cases where we have gotten multip am hits. >> -- multiple hits. i have a minute or so left. one is, do any of you fear that a broader regime of mandatory d.n.a. testing would test the capacity of the private laboratories to run the d.n.a. or is there not that kind of a capacity problem? >> there's definitely a capacity problem. all laboratories nationwide have a capacity problem if there's a mandate that we have to do every single kit. even without mandating every sing kit, the -- >> mandatory testing of every single violent criminal. >> it's actually done -- it's separate. there is convicted offender laboratories for each state and then there are local and state labs that process evidence. it would necessarily different.

the money would be allocated by the state. >> so the additional burden of processing offender data would not impede the evaluation of d.n.a. evidence in current inactive cases? >> there are separate laboratories. the forensic labt would have the capacity to do the evidence cases and the convicted offender data base lab would have the capacity. any time you mandate testing like that, the funding has to go with it. we have had quite a few unfunded mandates even in florida that now they've learned to add right in that if it's not funded, it can't happen. >> just one last question to the law enforcement representatives for the sake of the record, the effects of delay in processing evidence in an ongoing

investigation are often more than just loss of time. could you each briefly comment on some of the collateral damage that takes place in an investigation when the investigation can't move rapidly forward and doesn't hvm timely access to key evidence. >> that can be devastating to victims. it's devastating to wait years and to get a call from a police officer or a victim witness advocate in my office and say, you know that thing you have been trying to put behind you and trying to forget all these years, we're going to reopen that wound for you for good reason, of course, but that's very painful. it's not an easy call to make. it's not a call that we ever want to make. so i would like to see the system take care of that and at the same time process sexual

assault cases and other evidence kits. >> from a prosecute's time of view, you also lose witnesses, raise cross-examination issues. setting aside for a moment the effect on the victim, the effect on the case itself is often significant beyond the simple delay, is it not? >> yes, it is. it can be severely compromised. evidence goes away. it gets lost, memories change. we have had a number of cases where important witnesses are deceased by the time that we get the d.n.a. result. and so that compromises our case. we are looking at some of those cases now in an attempt to see if we can work around that problem, but that certainly is a problem. >> thank you very much. i just have a few follow-ups here. i wanted to go at this issue again and senator whitehouse touched on it, the national data

bases and how comprehensive they are. in your written testimony you talked about how wisconsin discovered it had 12,000 convicted offenders who were not in the convicted offender data base and this i don't think was an issue of the testing as much as the data wasn't dumped in, is that right? >> that's correct. my understanding is that some of this is this reaction to an unfunded mandate. some of the localities are required, of course, to collect kits tr all convicted offenders within a particular county. and i'm aware that that costs money to the counties and somewhat of a burden to counties which are strapped. and as a result, those counties are not as vigorous as they should be in collecting that data. i'm sure that wisconsin is not alone, that there is a problem of uncollected -- >> you're not picking on them because of the packers? >> no. >> you believe this happens in

other states, it's the actual physical entry of the data? >> i do. i would be shocked if it didn't, yes. >> do you know if we have that going on in minnesota? >> there is a problem in minnesota we are attempting to correct right now, but it is an issue. >> i was thinking about how the nitty-gritty testimony makes us realize that the miami-dade police department is note like "miami vice" and there is a lot of work that is done in the lab every day to catch the perpetrators. can you comment on the information in the data bases. >> the priorityization helps with the lag. on the priority cases, especially in cases, in homicides where you have so much evidence collected at the scene that we have meetings in-house with the detective assigned

analyst and the prosecute to resolve these issues and identify what needs to be analyzed right up front. it's a short turnaround on current cases. for cold cases, it's a different story. you have the technology to solve the crimes, but then you have a problem finding witnesses, et cetera, et cetera. so it's two-fold. as long as we adopt best practice in addressing these issues immediately as soon as the cases are submitted that should help solve it. and no, we don't drive hummers. >> rile remember that. the thing you mentioned in your testimony which i heard from our lab directors is forensic scientists and the amount of money that is put in to train them by the government and get them up to speed and what i have heard -- and i don't know if this was in your testimony, a

lot of times they may leave and go somewhere else and go to the private sector and it becomes a bidding war and i have heard this in our state. do you want to comment on that? >> we have the same issue. as nice as miami looks on tv, we do have a problem that forensic science is a hot place to go and if they want to come and be trained, we have had the misfortune to lose a few. >> where do they go? >> usually home. >> they go to other labs? >> other labs. it's not a situation where they are seeking a job anywhere else. i don't want to portray that miami-dade police lab is bad but they are going to where their familiesr so that becomes a problem. it is a two-year training process for d.n.a. from the date of hire to get them hired in-house and two

years training, it is two years. i may have zero vacancies but carry them as non-d.n.a. analysts for two years. >> anyone else like to comment? >> that is a tremendous issue. we can hire a prosecute and throw him right into the room. you can't do that with a d.n.a. analyst. you have to wait for them to complete the training and it's a long training. so when you lose an analyst like we lose them in the minnesota c. b.c.a., you can't throw someone else in there right away so it is a significant problem. >> anything more anyone wants to add? i want to thank you for your testimony today for taking the time to be here. as you can see, we are very devoted to working on this problem. we know there have been improvements and there have been

improvements. and we know there is a backlog issue and we want to be smart about how we tackle that. anyone who has worked on the front line as a prosecute understands this unfunded mandate issue and we have to figure out how to be smart to get the right rape kits tested and get them tested, that we also have to do better with training, everything from the nurses to the forensic scientists and i was interested in some of your points about the coordination with the police and prosecutors in the lab and improvements that can be made there. those are the things we are working on right there. my former job, which i loved very much, i think very back lovingly to that job especially what we have been going through here in washington but i have these memories that are etched in my mind about how we were able to use the science to not just convict horrendous

murderers and rapists but i will never forget that case and steve remembers this, we had someone come up from north carolina, that was a state who had identified who she thought was her rapist many years before and he had served something like six years in prison and then the d.n.a. tests showed it wasn't him. and he got out of prison and the two of them actually became friends. the real person was already in jail, convicted and they went around the country talking about witness i.d. and improvements that need to be made to that. i remember where we had a burglary and the burglar had broken some glass and got blood on the glass and that blood matched in another state and we were able to charge as number thrike 34546. we don't know and that was a

memory i have of improvements we have made in this technology and the tool that it is as you have pointed out for any kind of case. i'm optimistic of the work that can be done here, the place that science has taken us and all of you in your respective roles have been a big part of that. thank you very much and we look forward to working with you on the re-authorization of the act and all the work we will be doing in this area. thank you very much. we will keep the record open for one week for any additional submissions. and the hearing is adjourned. thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> coming up former cia analyst gives a historical perspective

of america's presence in afghanistan. following that, a discussion on possible future threats to the united states. and later, a special presentation of our documentary "the blair house, the president's guest house." >> tonight on "america and the courts," presentations from c-span supreme court week special. supreme court journalists on covering the court. former u.s. slol general and appellate attorney on arguing before the court. that's tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> in the mid-1990's, wasow was one of the most influential people to watch in cyber space.

helped found a charter school in brooklyn and explained new technologies on "oprah." sunday night he talks about his current studies at harvard and what's ahead. >> former cia analyst bruce riedel chaired president obama's initial policy review of afghanistan and pakistan. he now gives a historical perspective of the past eight years of america's presence in the region, the president's decision to send additional troops and the prospects for defeating the insurgency. this hour-long talk came at a recent conference hosted by the jamestown foundation. [ >> i have been referred to the

architect of obama's afghan strategy. bruce well suited for all of that and today you will be delighted to know he is not only going to speak for 10 minutes but 40-minute talk planned and i think there will be an opportunity to hear what are his thoughts on the strategy in afghanistan and this very critical time in america's foreign policy. bruce is a senior fellow at the brookings institution and retired in 2006 after 30 years of service at the central intelligence agency with many postings overseas. senior adviser in asian middle east and on the staff of four presidents. he was negotiator in several peace sum myths. he was at the present timey assistant secretary of defense in nearest and south asian senior adviser at nato.

in can january 2009, president obama asked bruce to chair a review of american policy towards afghanistan and pakistan, the results of which the president announced in his speech on march 27, 2009. more importantly, he is the author of this book "the search for al qaeda, its leadership, and i'dology." bruce will be available for book signing in the back and if you purchase the book, he will say a few words to you and will sign the book. it is coming out in paperback. your last chance to get one in hard copy. bruce will be available for that briefly. after his talk, he will take a few questions and answers, which will address the audience and i would like to turn the floor over to bruce and we are delighted to have you here today, bruce. [applause]

>> thank you, glenn, nor that kind flukes -- for that kind introduction. i'm pleased to speak to the jamestown tounges -- foundation. it has provided people around the world as to what is going on in the terrorism world. it is a special pleasure to be the keynote speaker today. 10 months ago and a few days, i was minding my own business in my home on the eastern shore of maryland when the phone range and a voice came on and said, please hold for the president. a couple of seconds later, on came a voice, hello, bruce, it's

barack and i got an offer like the offers you get in the mafia movies you couldn't say no to. and the offer was to share a 60-day review on america's policy towards afghanistan and pakistan and of course towards al qaeda. as the president explained then, in his judgment, this is the single most important foreign policy and national security issue he will face as president of the united states. perhaps a little background is in order. in order to also help you understand my remarks, i retired from the cia in november of 2006. in march of 2007, two individuals from barack obama camp asked me if i would like to be an adviser to the campaign.

i agreed on one condition, i didn't want to get a job for myself, i wanted to find a job for the senior senator from illinois in the federal government. i should also tell you i went home that night i told my wife, this will be lots of fun, but it won't last very long. there is no way barack obama is going to become president of the united states. so bear that prediction in mind as i go forward. [laughter] >> what i would like to do then over the course of the next 40 minutes or so is review the key judgments of the strategic review that i chaired, talk a little bit about what has happened in the interim when the closure of that strategic review in march and the president's comments at west point and then look at the road ahead. let me be careful and clear, i'm speaking here as a senior fellow . i'm not here as a supposeman for

president obama, for the united states government. do not interpret my words as reflecting the views of the united states government in anyway whatsoever. i'll start with the bottom line right up front. president obama inherited in january a disaster in afghanistan and pakistan. a war that had begun with a brilliant military success at virtually no cost was squandered. and for seven years the previous administration dithered about afghanistan and pakistan and did not act. as a consequence, an insurgency which should never have been allowed to grow threatens afghanistan and threatens to defeat nato's first ground operation ever.

worst than that, the disaster in afghanistan is destabilizing south and central asia as a whole. most particularly, next door in pakistan. the situation the president inherited is bad and has gotten worse in the 10 months since then. but we have no time machine. we cannot go back and do it over. we can wish for that, but that is not a realistic strategy. so what is the situation today? let me start with al qaeda. we would not have 70,000 american troops in afghanistan and 35,000 more enroute if not for september 11. we all know that. so what is the status of al qaeda today? i will summarize what we have done to al qaeda in one sentence. like any one-sentence summary, it lacks subtle ti.

in eight years, we have succeeded in moving the al qaeda core leadership, their senior operational planners and propoganda instrument from kandahar, afghanistan to a location unknown, believed to be about 100 miles away somewhere in pakistan. that is not to diminish the hard work of our soldiers, our intelligence officers and our diplomats and allies in fighting al qaeda. it is not to diminish the accomplishments we have had like bring cleedcleed under detention and killing many others. al qaeda remains a deadly enemy. it is the first truly global terrorist organization in history. its reach and scope in the last eight years is almost

breathtaking from algiers to washington to bali to madrid. this organization has struck again and again and again around the world. it has developed franchises. it has developed surrogates. it has acquired allies to increase its reach. it has become more than a terrorist organization, an idea, a narrative that inspires a small minority of muslims, a very small minority of muslims to carry out acts of mass violence. most of its attacks are indiscriminate, but it has demonstrated a chilling capacity to strike against targets like beautyo, like the u.n. headquarters in baghdad and against the deputy minister of interior in saudi arabia.

we see its reach in the united states today, both direct and indirect. the afghan american arrested by the f.b.i. in colorado demonstrated the direct connection. what happened in fort hood demonstrates the indirect connection of the global islamic jihad. the only sustained significant pressure on the al qaeda core comes from between 30,000 and 60,000 feet in the air from the drones, the predators. the drones are a technological marvel and they have provenñr highly successful against a limited range of targets in a limited piece of geography. they have, to some extent, and it's hard to know if you're not a member of al qaeda, how big that extent is, disrupting al

qaeda in recent months. but drones are a tactic, they're not a strategy. they are like attacking a bee hive one at a time. you will not destroy one bee at a time. it's ironic eight years, osama bin laden is a voice we hear, but virtually invisible man. we have no idea where this man is, that despite the biggest manhunt in history and a $50 million reward. he could be in the room next door as far as we know. last week, the bbc put out a report poorly sourced that he was in afghanistan in february. what was notable about that report was not how good the report was, but how rare we evei get bad reportsñr about where

osama bin laden is. second thing i would suggest to you about al qaeda today is that in afghanistan and pakistan, it is part of a much larger syndicate of terrorist organizations within which it is embedded. why what do i mean by that? the afghan taliban and the pakistan taliban and they are really one taliban in many ways, a whole bunch of other groups whose names change but who we know are the same basic characters are a syndicate of terror. they don't have a single leader. they don't have a single agenda, but they cooperate with each other. individuals within these movements move back and forth within organizations. they do not respect the lanes

that we try to impose on them. and most of all, none of them in eight years have been willing to turn on al qaeda and give up its core leadership. what is remarkable when you look at it is that more than any other individual, it is omar that the syndicate pledges his allegiance to. and he claims to be commander of the faithful, a title which if you think about it for a minute shows a man with a remarkable ego, commander of the faithful of 1.6 billion muslims worldwide. i'm very skeptical we can negotiate with the taliban and skeptical that we can negotiate with someone who is inflated with his own importance. al qaeda is embedded in this

larger syndicate of terror, which is why it is hard to go after him. i would suggest to you, the single most dangerous element, it has struck with awesome fury. and as we are learning its global reach is also something to worry about. let me say a few words about afghanistan. you can also summarize what we've done in afghanistan in one sentence and where we are today. we are losing the war in afghanistan, but it is not yet lost. i hope. general mcchrystal's report courtesy of bob woodward all of you have had a chance to read, is an excellent summary of the situation in afghanistan.

i think he hit the nail on the head. he got it exactly right. if there is one part of that report, which i urge you to look at, which talks about detention facilities in afghanistan in which he says, we no longer control the detention facilities in which we are keeping captured insurgents. they are under the control of al qaeda and the taliban, more radicalization and more recruitment for al qaeda takes place in those detention facilities than anywhere else in afghanistan today. when you have lost control of the prison camps in which you are putting insurgents in a counterinsurgency, you are in a deep, deep hole. ever measure we have demonstrates the momentum is entirely with the taliban today. bob gates reiterated that several times in his statements last week on the hill.

but it is not yet lost, because we do not face an afghanistan, a national uprising. what we face in afghanistan is a pashtun insurgency, which is confined to the pashtun ethnic community. the soviets faced a national uprising, virtually the entire country was in opposition to soviet occupation. and soviet behavior reinforced that opposition. we face an insurgency which is, for the most part, confined to the pashtun community. by definition, that means the majority of afghans do not favor the taliban. and more than that, we know from reliable polling that the majority of pashtuns don't want to see a return to the islamic return of afghanistan. no one in their right mind would want to go back to living that

omar created in the 1990's. it is the self-constraining factor on the taliban which offers us the most hope to be able to turn this around. thirdly, let me talk about pakistan. pakistan is today the strategic prize in this part of the world as well as the most dangerous country in the world. why do i say that? because all of the things that should worry americans about the future of the world in the 21st century come together in pakistan in a unique and combustible way. nuclear war and peace, proliferation of nuclear technology, terrorism, the future of islam, the future of democracy in the islamic world, the relationship between military and civilçó world in t islamic world, all these issues are alive in pakistan like they are no where else in the world. pakistan has the fastest growing

nuclear arsenal in the world today. it has more terrorists per square kill meter. world's second largest country and yet its government is teatering on the brink of collapse. pakistan is trying to make a transition from a military dictatorship to what they hope is democracy. we should support that effort with everything we do. but this is the fourth time pakistan has tried to make that transition and you have to believe in the triumph of hope over experience to believe it's going to be successful. today the government appears to have a very limited shelf life. the president may stay on as a figure head, but power is slipping away from him every day. the alternatives are not particularly bright either. we may see a return to sharif as

two times as prime minister should not fill you with confidence. we don't get to choose who's pakistan's leaders. and when we have done so, we have remorse. the second point about pakistan, pakistan has a dynamic, confusing and complex relationship with the syndicate of terrorism, which i talked about earlier. pakistan either created or was the midwife for these terrorist organizations. it retains very close links with some of them. it has been a passive supporter of omar for most of the last seven years and active supporter of omar up until the 12 of september, 2001, when armitage threatened it with being thrown

back into the stone age. it has a capacity to both be a patron ofñi terror and a victimf terror, which is very hard for most western minds to put your head around. it is today very much at war. this is a serious conflicts. the attacks demonstrate that this war is not going particularly well for the pakistani army today. if it spreads further south into the sin, it may deal an economic death blow to pakistan today. why does pakistan have such a complex relationship? because of its obsession with india. the pakistani army believes and has believed for 60 years that asymmetric warfare is part of its tactics for defeating the indians. it has not succeeded, it has not

worked. but this view remains deeply entrenched in significant parts in the pakistani officer corps and the pakistani elite. in short, the stakes in afghanistan and pakistan could not be greater. the future of al qaeda, the future of the nato alliance, possibly nuclear war and peace in southeast asia, all of these issues come together. on the 27 of march, president obama rightly focused the mission of american forces in this combat zone although on a more narrow one, on disrupting, dismantling and defeating al qaeda and destroying its sanctuary along the afghanistan-pakistan border. if you read his speech carefully, it was clear while there was a specific mission, to get there, we had to stabilize

afghanistan and pakistan, and that's a much, much broader mission. the review that i gave to the president which he endorsed, has 20 major recommendations in it, 180 subrecommendations. i'm not going to go all of them here today. most of them are outlined in his speech on the 27 of march and his speech at west point. what i want to stress is this, this is resource-intensive. this is going to come with a big cost, to send one american soldier to afghanistan for one year costs $1 million. if you think there's economy of scale, forget it. sending 30,000 is going to cost more than $30 million. it doesn't get cheaper by sending more. it gets more expensive. and on the nonmilitary side, it is expensive as well.ñi the president has signed the

kerry-lugar bill. before last fall if i said $1.5 billion, people would have said and say wow. but $1.5 billion over 10 years is $15 million and make pakistan the largest single repository of american economic assistance in the world outside of afghanistan and iraq. what happened in the eight months from march 27 until his speech last week at west point? many, many things, but two which i want to highlight. first on the military side. we had an unprecedented event or virtually unprecedented event. the strategic review called upon the commander of isaf forces in afghanistan to come up with an operational plan for a

counterinsurgency strategy in afghanistan. that was given to general mckern and. he was judged to be the wrong man for the job and was fired by secretary gates. that was a huge thing. the last time we fired a battlefield commander during wartime was 1951. and the issue then was whether or not to use nuclear weapons against communityist china. i don't know what the general did, but if he got in as much trouble with douglas mcarthur, it must have been pretty big. but the important thing is, we lost time. we lost two months and had to take three months to get general mcchrystal comfortable with the situation on the ground. instead of an operational plan being delivered in may, it was delivered at the end of august. in the interim, the military situation in afghanistan deteriorated sharply.

and more importantly from the president's standpoint, support for the war and among democrats on the hill dropped through the floor. what had been the good war a year ago was just like every other war, a bad war and skepticism about the war had become widespread among the president's core supporters. the second thin that happened was on the -- thing that happened was on the political front. the expectation in march was that we would be able to work with the then afghan government and with the international community to produce something that would look like a legitimate and credible presidential election. instead, we got a fiasco followed by a disaster, no one can pretend this afghan presidential election was legitimate or credible. president karzai's supporters

produced one million fraudulent ballots. that's a lot of fraudulent ballots, even by the standards of florida or illinois, this is cheating on a global scale. he got caught and he got away with it. i'm not sure how illegitimate his government looks in the eyes of afghans, but it looks illegitimate in the eyes of americans and of our european and noneuropean isaf partners. this administration has to bear some of the responsibility for this. this didn't happen on george bush's watch, it happened on its watch. its behavior towards the afghan election was a little bit like the famous deer in the headlights, it could see the problem coming but seem mess merized until it was run over. here again, we don't have a time machine and go back and fix it.

we will have to work with president karzai. we may find that this was the fatal blow, i hope not, to our efforts to defeat the taliban. we don't know that yet. and i think we can yet turn it around. but mrs. clinton now has her date for the next three years. she will be managing mr. karzai. she needs to avoid demonizing and avoid temper tantrums and needs to find a way to bring out the best in president karzai. so where are we going forward from here? let me offer you three observations. first, this is a bold gamble. what the president has embarked upon today has no guarantee of success. there's no assurance that this is going to work. there are all kinds of things that may fail. trying to build an afghan army

and police force may be a lot harder and i suggest will be a lot harder than we think. trying to reverse the taliban's momentum is going to be difficult. for sure, casualties are going to go up significantly. and domestic dissent here and in other nato countries over this war is going to get stronger and harder. there are several potential game changers that could change everything literally in a matter of minutes. another 9/11 attack inside the united states and it doesn't have to bring two of the largest buildings in the world to be significant that comes out of pakistan will be a game changer. the president of the united states will not simply be able to call up islamabad and say, do something about it. he will have to do something about it. another mumbai-style mass

casualty attack coming out of pakistan will also be a game changer. the indian government's capacity to absorb mass casualty attacks, i suspect, has been reached. it will not send dumarche to islamabad the next time. as hard as it is, it is the best of the bad options we have today. we only really had two other options. one was cutting and running. we can define cutting and running in a lot of different ways, downsize the mission, readjust the mission, but all of them come down to cutting and running one way or another. i think the president wisely ruled that out from the beginning. if we are defeated in afghanistan by the taliban, it will also be a global game

changer. this will be the second superpower as the taliban loves to remind us, defeated in afghanistan and the global revere bations of that will be enormous and no more so than next door in pakistan. thirdly, this issue is now going to consume this presidency, which is why it took them 92 days to come to a second conclusion because they don't like that answer and i wouldn't like it either if i was rahm emanuel or david axelrod. this is going to be the foreign policy that the president will be judged by the american people in november, 2012 and foreign policy that the congress of the united states is judged less than a year upon. other issues may outweigh it, the economy, but this will be the foreign policy issue that

the people will look at. it will need to be explained to the american people again and again why they are sending their sons and daughters to the other side of the planet to fight a war which has been going on now longer than any war in american history. and it's going to have to be explained how we intend to win that war and how we hope to be able to get out of it. that will mean political energy, political capital and the most precious thing in any white house, the time that the president will be devoting to this issue. wars consume presidencies and this war stands on the verge of consuming this presidency. last thing i would say, my final note, the good news in all of this, i genuinely believe we will know in july, august of 2011, whether this strategy works. why do i say that? because by then we will have the

additional forces in for six months -- i'm sorry, for more than a year. we will have found out whether we can break the momentum of the taliban. we will have found out how pakistan reacts to all of this. we will have found out whether we can build an afghan national security force. we will not have achieved victory. the end will be no where in sight but we will at least know whether we have a strategy that has a promise of success. if it does, i would suggest to you that there will be very, very few american soldiers coming home in the summer of 2011. if it doesn't work, we will then face the very, very difficult decision of owning up to that and deciding where we go next. i sure hope he doesn't call me that day. thank you very much for your attention. i look forward to your

questions. [applause] >> thank you, bruce. we'll open the floor and we'll have time for questions and answers. i would like to call on somebody who hasn't asked a question yet today. if there is no one else -- anybody have a question? all right, you're the man. sorry. we'll go back. >> thanks for this talk and i would like to ask one question, if we use the strategy of cut and run, do you recommend any psychological tactics to make the enemy feel defeated? because we can still do cut and run as long as we are covering this with proper psychological tactics that can give them the

feel of defeat. >> it's a clever idea. nothing springs to mind immediately as to how we can turn retreat into victory. i mean, there are various levels of cut and run. we don't have to completely give up. we can say we're afghanizing the war more quickly. we can hope that the afghan government that we leave survives as long as the previous government survived. after all, the communist government in the afghanistan outlived the soviet union, but only barely. it's not a parallel i think we want to spend a lot of time thinking about. i don't think there is a downsizing the mission alternative. i know there's a view out there let's go to pure counterterrorism. it won't work.

as an intelligence professional who spent a great deal of time trying to persuade people to commit treason, they won't do it if they don't think you'll be around to give them a check after you complete your mission. it doesn't work that way. >> this morning, ambassador benjamin gave an interesting talk and during the course of his 15 or so minutes, he failed to use three words that you used in the first five minutes of your talk, which was global islamic jihad. i'm curious from your advisory perspective to what level was this broader struggle, how did that resonate in the current administration? there seemed to be a pushback at looking at the problem through that lense.

>> i'm saying whatever i want to say.ñi he is a very good friend and colleague and he's now in the administration. the similar left answer i would say this administration does understand this is a battle of ideas and narratives and has to come up with a counternarrative to the narrative of the global islamic jihad that ayman zawahiri has created over the course of the last decade or so and that is the president's speech in cairo. the president's speech in cairo was addressed to ayman zawahiri. what is the narrative of the global islamic jihad? short version is that the united states is now an imperialist power, the crusading power, which is try to impose its will on the muslim world by dividing

the muslim world up into small states which it can manipulate such as the aurgement divided the arab world inñr the wake of world war i.çó .

>> i am a student studying in the university of maryland. i'm from afghanistan and arrived here almost four months ago. i really enjoyed your speech. it was great. i just wanted to make a comment about my country, afghanistan. one is talking about the elections. i was there during the elections and was working directly on the elections, and you were seeing that how things were being arranged for fraud. and everybody was watching that, you know, and nobody was -- and we could see that this

was the consequences or this would be the consequences of the elections. anyway, it's not a big deal in the eyes of afghans because it was the second election in the history of our country, and we were used to post presidents and kings. that's not a big deal. and right now we have to obviously find a way to work with the president and the administration, and the best thing we can do is to push the president to bring the right people on board, and secondly with regards to the engagement of the united states in afghanistan, irble say that, yeah, -- i shall say that we know and people talk about eight years of engagement in afghanistan, but i'm telling you that it's not been eight years of engagement of the united states and the rest of

the country's international community. it's been one year and a few months of engagement beginning in 2002 to 2003 when the united states went to iraq. and since then, we were seic that -- seeing that all the problems, all of the issues that were taking us to failure and were taking us to giving support to the taliban but we were just watching. and i hope -- and just i want to put an end to -- >> ask you the ask question, please? we don't have time for a statement. >> i just wanted to finish my statement by saying that we

have the chance to succeed in afghanistan because we have got the will of our people on all sides. thank you very much. >> just comment briefly. i think i agree with almost everything you said. carsi's problem is more here than it is there. and i certainly agree with everything you said about the impact of the war in iraq on this venture in afghanistan. >> we have a question over here. wait for the mike, please. >> you've already had one question today, sir. let's let people who haven't asked questions. >> i'll make it fast. i'm a journalist. you contrasted the situation in afghanistan facing us now with the situation facing the russians. the soviets before. i really hate to ask this question but you sort of begged it with the comparison. the other comparison that's

often made is the situation that obama is facing with what johnson faced in vietnam. so you know the question. >> the ghost of vietnam haunts this administration. it walks through the corridors of today's white house every day. it certainly walks through the corridors of the united states congress constantly. but afghanistan 2009 is not vietnam 1965 or not even 1961. it's a very different situation. we were attacked from afghanistan. the most successful foreign attack on the united states of america bar one wha? the royal navy's attack on our capital in 1814 was carried out from afghanistan. those who did that are plotting today a repeat performance.

in 2006 on the fifth anniversary of september 11, they planned a repeat performance which would have been more chilling and devastating than what happened on september 11, 2001, the so-called operation o vert, to blow up eight jumbo jets flying across the atlantic to the united states and canada. had that succeeded, more people would have died than died on september 1u9s. more importantly than that, the sbration airline business would have gone out of business. nobody in their right mind would get on an airplane and fly again. as bad as the veetcong were, as bad as the north veetmizz were, they had no design to attack the united states. the specter of the north vietnamese attacking seattle was entirely created by the johnson administration. it had no basis in fact. secondly, we are not in

afghanistan as a colonial imperialist power. there is not an american in america who wants to control afghanistan. to the contrary, we would like to get away as quickly as we can. the situation in vietnam, the united states was there with very little international legitimacy and was perceived to be the repeat colonialism of the french. i also don't think afghanistan today is the afghanistan with the soviet union. 2007. let's deal with the situation we have, not to an alies to other situations. >> what about the potential of creating -- do you know the differences in the situation in afghanistan, the potential of a long, drawn out, draining war that ultimately would have to

pull out of? >> certainly in terms of domestic politics there is a great parallel. the president finds himself in a terrible situation. all of the critics of the war are nancy pelosi democrats from san francisco, came bridge, and new york city. all the supporters of the war are sara palin republicans from alaska and arizona. it's a terrible place for a democratic president to be. people he has to convince to support him are his natural constituencies. he doesn't have to convince sara palin. she's just looking for the opportunity to say you're screwing it up. the politics of it are terrible for the president. >> you mentioned that we don't know where bin laden is and there's been no credible reports and very few bad reports. but there have been reports over a number of years that he has if not stayed in iran gone

back and forth to iran. there are reports in 2004, there are photographic evidence there that he was there until 2009. how do you evaluate those reports to the islamic republic and perhaps his sojourn there? >> i want to be absolutely explicit. the last time we had a solid piece of information about where osama bin laden was, was eight years ago. we don't have a clue where he is today. bob gates asked this question in meet the press this week and he said it's been a few years. i'm a big fan of bob gates. he's been my boss in more organizations than i can remember. but i think he was being a little misleading. it's been eight years, mr. gates, since we had any idea where he was. has he been in iran?

i don't rule out that possibility. al qaeda has been able to operate operational activity in iran on more than one occasion. we don't know what the relationship between the government of iran and that operational activity was. i would suggest to you that if the iranians want to give us trouble in the world in the next few years, one of the simplest ways for them to do it is to just allow a higher degree of al qaeda operational activity on their territory. since we have virtually no baseline as to what they allow, more of it coming will be hard to judge is it important, is it insignificant? where is this all coming from? the relationship between al qaeda and iran is a black hole. >> i have a question about that syndicate of terrorist organizations you were

referring to including the afghan taliban. and there was not a single afghan on the plane on nine 11 as far as i know, not a single afghan when one guy who was involved in anything which really happened in the terrorist field. and owe mar sending out, apart from this he is amlouing himself to use, but also in practice it doesn't mean anything. up to now. he is sending out messages which say come and talk to me. he is saying we're not threatening anyone. so why don't we give it a chance in a situation where we are not sure whether this strategy will work out or not? >> i think there are several questions buried in that one question. first of all, those chosen by osama bin laden to carry out september 11th were chosen very, very carefully. and it was very deliberate that 15 of them were saudis.

bin laden brilliantly realized that by putting 15 saudis on those airplanes he was going to create a crisis in u.s.-saudi relations, and he did. it was a brilliant piece of tactical advice. fe could have had all 19 saudis, he would have had all 19 saudis. but apparently he couldn't find enough people to fly who were capable of doing that. mull mar and negotiations, i don't think that's what he is saying. i think what he is saying is we are prepared to let you leave more or less gracefully. and then the islamic emrat of afghanistan will be recreated and we will talk to our fellow afghans about what their places will be in it. he is not offering negotiations with the karzai gft. to the contrary he is saying he is a traitor. he deserves a traitor's response. that all said, i do not believe

that all of the taliban is irreconcileable. i believe parts of the taliban may be prepared to break with omar and the philosophy of the jihad. they're not going to do it now. nobody in your right mind who is now a taliban supporter is going to break with that movement today. you'd be dead tomorrow morning and so would your family. if the momentum is shifted, and we can offer security and protection to people who break from the taliban, then we may begin to see fishrs within the taliban movement. if we do something simple, like pay afghan soldiers more money than the taliban pays their soldiers, we may also find that many people will shift over. we don't know. that's why part of what i mean by saying we're going to know in 183407b9ses. in 18 months we will see whether fisures like this begin

to develop nmt taliban. we will see whether resourcing the afghan army more properly brings recruits in who might otherwise go to taliban. i think we'll know that within that definite period of time. but i'm very skeptical of the notion that the taliban is at least be omar is the surea of the taliban is interested in anything like negotiations with the united states. if they are, there's a simple way for them to prove their bonafidees. give us osama bin laden. >> we've got time for two more questions. >> thank you. i'm john with the american conservative magazine. not all the opposition to the war is leftist democrats. we were against the iraq war and also. what about a defensive strategy? it's been promoted as william lind on fourth generation warfare.

some of our writers, that america as a democracy we are incapable of really fighting against the guerilla's as we have been losing this consistently. the off shore balancing ideas, we should really be moving to a defensive strategy, which we could do well, et cetera. i again repeat, as a democracy, we can't with all the conflicting pressures here, have a coherent policy. for example, the settlements on the west bank. we can't stop them. >> the short answer to your question is we tried a defensive policy between 1998 when al qaeda declared war on us, and september 11, 2001. and we ended up with september 11, 2001. i sat in the situation room in the white house when we lobbed cruise missiles at what we thought was osama bin laden's next known point of activity.

that's a very difficult strategy to carry out because we have to be lucky in foiling every single plot that they come up with. they only have to be lucky once or twice to have devastating effects on us. we may get there. let me put a marker down here. i said in 18 months we will know. if it's not working, we need to be very honest and rigorous with ourselves and say it's not working. the pashe patient is dead. and then we may have to go to that strategy. but i would rather find out whether there is a better alternative to the one you're suggesting. >> i think -- there we go. i appreciate your remarks. i'm a former intelligence officer like you and former army officer. probably a lot of those types, quite frankly, in this room. so here's the deal. five years ago, congress rejected by 402-2, that was the

vote, a resolution to bring back the draft. so we're not willing to have our sons and daughters, our friends and neighbors, bear the burden. physically. the speaker has said there will be no war surtax. so we're not willing to embrace paying for this thing financially. one would say. what does that say about our level of commitment? if we take your proposition at face value, which is we have to find a way to mitigate this threat, i don't think you can completely eliminate it. and i think that's the big lie out there right now. that politicians on both sides of the aisle are saying that the threat can be made to permanently go away. not happening. when are we going to start talking honestly with each other and the american people about that fact? and what are we going to do to get people to understand that if we're really going to engage

in conflicts like this we're going to have to pay for them? thank you. >> it's a very good and very difficult question. it goes a little bit beyond my area of expertise. as i said, this is going to be a resource intense effort, and that has all kinds of implications for other things we want to do. i don't know whether the situation in iraq is going to get worse next year as many expect it will, but i think that the drawdown of iraq -- u.s. forces in iraq will be compelled fwi situation in afghanistan. we will not have the option of doing both at once. one great lie that has been exposed in the last decade is this. that the united states military can fight two medium-sized conflicts at the same time. we can't do it. lesson to self-, if you're involved in one, don't start

another one. that has implications in other places. the notion that the united states today could use military force against iran while it is bogged down in a quagmire in afghanistan and is trying to get out of one in iraq i think is lunesy. we couldn't -- we could not afford to do that. we simply could not afford to do that. that has implication force the future of iran's nuclear weapons development program. no president is going to take the military option off the table, but i think anyone who looks seriously at the united states military today like bob gates or admiral mullen would say to the president if he said let's start a third war, to president, you want to do that, it's your nickle, but here's my resignation. i'm not going with you. thank you very much. [applause] >> bruce will be available -- [applause]

>> bruce will be tivel sign the copies of his book. we'll break for ten minutes and then begin the next session. but bruce will be available outside. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> next, a discussion on future threats to the united states. after that, a special presentation of our documentary, the blare house, the president ds guest house. and later, a look at a former british ambassador to the u.s. testifying on british involvement in the war in iraq.

>> look at some of the possible threats to the u.s. in the future. part of a university of virginia forum marking 20 years since the fall of the berlin wall. this portion is an hour and 45 minutes. >> panel three of when walls came down. berlin, 9/11, and u.s. strategy in uncertain times. this is a 2009 william and carol stevenson conference here at the miller center at the university of virginia. i am not catteds lean mack namarea as you may have guessed. i am john owen, on the faculty of the department of politics here at u.v.a. i'm very glad to be what you

know, the whip cracker here on panel three to make sure every, everything moves along briskly and we keep within our time limits. let's get right to it if we could. i do want to thank ann for all that she has done to make this happening. and she seems to have left the room. thank you, ann, very much. the format will be as in other panels, after i am done in about 30 seconds we'll take our panelists in order. let me introduce them to you briefly. first is mary, who is professor of international relations at the university of southern california's school of international relations. professor serati is a historian. she has just come out with a book with princeton university press, 1989 the struggle to create post-cold war europe. this just received the prize

for distinguished scholarship in german and european studies. and she is currently at the american academy in berlin and came over for this event. so thanks for coming all that way. second, to professor's left is professor bruce comings, who is a distinguished service professor in history at the university of chicago. professor cummings is a well known expert in modern korean history, 20th century international history, u.s. -east asian relations, economy, and american foreign relations. author of many books and influential articles. next year yale university press is publishing his book, a dominion from sea to sea, pacific ascendancy and american power. our third panelist is william wol forth, who is professor of

government and chair of the department of government at dartmutsdz college. among his books is the most recent one, world out of balance. international relations theory and the challenge of american primesy. he is an influential interlock lar in a number of debates in international relations, including what it means to be living in a une polar international system. he is editor and chief of the journal security studies as well. so our first speaker will be mary elease serti. so i will hand it over to you. >> thank you very much. as john just said, i've just come out with this book, 1989, so i've got so many details and only 15 minutes in which to tell them. i will try to restrain myself and i will be happy to take questions. this book is an international history of 1989.

it builds on an early exceptional work, the best study of u.s. foreign policy in this period. i had the advantage of more sources having written this book more recently, so i had the opportunity to go to russia, poland, to germany, britain, and france and look at their documents on german unification as well as look at the materials in james bakers' collection and also in the bush library, which is also thanks, he chose to foot nothe his books, they were not available at the time but as a result of the his decision to feet note them it's been possible for scholars to request them and they are now available. so there is really a extraordinary source basis available on 1989 for his attorneys. it's in some ways -- historians, it's in some way unusual because often times documents are kept closed for 20 or 30 years. .

so you have to wait that long to look at the documents, and then four or five years to work on them. so usually there's this sort of 30 year gap between events and studies. and that's not the case here. i can talk a little bit about why but there has been a lot of decisions mad to release documents early. so as a result it's possible to leap frog over historical periods for which we still don't have the documents, indeed much of the reagan period, and move forward into the george hw bush period and do scholarship already. so that was, when i realized that was possible, when i realized these sources were open largely because of the personal decisions of policy makers kike coal and gorbechov to release them, that's when i decided to do this book. and the book is concerned with the same themes of this conference. it's not an end of the cold war books. there are many out there

already. that was not what i was trying to do. what i was trying to do was ask a different question, which is when international order collapses, when you have these dramatic moments that reveal that long-term social, economic, and military pressures have come together to produce a moment of great change, what does the day afterwards look like? how is policy makers respond to that? how do you try to master the chaos? how do you try to move forward? that was the question that interested me as specifically with regard to 1989. i should add on a personal note that i had a somewhat unusual per spective on the two events of interest. i was an undergraduate on a year of study abroad at the free university of west berlin in the academic year 1988-1989. and while to my ever lasting regret i went back to the united states to go to graduate

school in september 1989, i nonetheless had a good sense of -- i certainly didn't know the wall was going to come down. but thn you had the mass flow of reefies across central europe and so forth. so i had a clear sense of both of the cold war context which was in place at the start of my year in west berlin in the summer of 19 88 and then the changes. fast forward to 2001, and i was serving as a white house fellow. my first day as a white house fellow was september 4, 2001. so the first week went fine. but then, of course the events of september 1u9s occurred and -- 11th occurred. before when i was a student, i was in no way a position of authority, i was just a spectator but with a seat close to the front. so for these two events i have personal recollections of the

context. but as a scholar it's been gratifying to look at the original documents at what was going on at the real center of events. so that's enough about the background. let me give you a sense of what is in the paper and then more generally in the book. in both obviously, in the book at more length, i first try to establish a narrative of the sequence of events. it's a story full of a lot of chance and contingency, particularly the opening of the berlin wall which was accidental. that is well understood in europe. but cure yussly not understood in the english language literature. you keep seeing things appearing, u.s. foreign policy, that talk about the conscious decision of the east german government to open the wall, which there was not one. and it's important that it's accidental, because it catches everyone unaware. so everyone is starting on a level playing field. and the date on which it occurs is significant because it happens early enough in the

gorbechov's trajectory that he still has enough time to determine the outcome. of course, the wall was going to open at some point. but if it had happened a lot later, if it had happened after his authority had fallen apart, perhaps at the same time that the coup was going on in the soviet union, if it had happened after the violence in romania. so the fact that it owns by accident when it does is very significant. and when i looked at the documents from all these countries about this time period, i saw again and again that policy makers, to describe what was happening after the wall came down, used the language of architecture. bob did it again last night in his comments. they talked about gorbechov of course had been talking about a common european home. chole started talking about two germanies under a european roof. baker reading a text was talking about a trance atlantic

security architecture. so i decided to follow the lead of the historical actors and use that as the organizing metaphor for the book. and this is also the way that i addressed the question of how do policy makers respond in the aftermath of these dramatic events. so what i decided to do was think about what happened after november 1989 as an architectural competition, where you had different ark teshts proposing different blueprints in a highly competitive fashion to try to succeed, to try to be the one who could put down the blueprint for post cold war europe the fastest. and i found that worked well because as you know if you win an architectural competition, that doesn't mean you get to build anything. because immediately the people who lost sue you. they say the contest was unfair. they say the people who commissioned it have second thoughts. so then there's a long process of realizing your model.

and that was certainly the effect here as well. so in looking at all the documents, i saw four kinds of models that were at one point or another seriously proposed. i should say i'm trying to establish policies here. i'm not trying to say these were all equally likely but i find it very helpful to compare the path that was chosen with the paths that were not. in other words, with the counter fact tulls. and the four major models that i found after the wall came down were, and i'll describe these in more detail. restoration, revivalism, heroism and prefab. restoration is an architectural term basically meaning to copy something exactly. it means to basically rebuild something exactly like it looked before. it's an attempt to do your best to recreate something exactly the way it was before. and i saw this in the immediate

response of the soviet union which was to say 1989 is 194r5. world war ii just ended. we are going to have a four-power conference. we are going to have a peace treaty. and we're going to pretend that world war ii just ended and that's how we're going to resolve just what happened. and briefly, the other four powers play along. there is actually a four power actually only meeting. it completely shocked both the east and the west germans who felt that they were being treated like a protect rat. there's a sbeach by a russian leader saying we've just defeated the nazis. he will mutsdz coal deciding this would not stand rapidly proposed his model, which i called revivalism. now, revivalism is an architectural term that's slightly different. it means building something

that is informed by an older style but that is modernized, updated. it's something that thomas jefferson would have appreciated if you look around this campus, you can see how much he admired roman architecture but yet the red brick is american. so he felt he needed to counter this notion that it was 1945 and that he didn't matter and that germany didn't matter. and he proposed to revive a confederation. november 28, he proposed via his shocking ten-point speech, which no one knew about in advance, except the potential exception of the white house, that there should be a two german state over the course of decades he thought if he were extremely lucky, maybe two decades but probably a lot more, over a long period of time, two 21st century germanies would essentially grow together in unity after the establishment of structures. so he proposed this model which he thought was very viable, not

the least because the area known as germany had existd in a confederate state for a while. and this model was undone when he himself decided to withdraw it. he himself went to east germany and realized that he could aim higher. he could be the chancellor of of german unity. so he himself cut this and decided to push for rapid german unity. the russians in response to this abandoned their restoreation model and proposed what i call a heroic model. the term heroism unday in everyday like is an unambiguous term. it's a kind of fool heardy. it's a term used to describe the zion exercises of the mid 20th century often in the service of authoritarian regimes that were misguided. so he had a very vague scrigs

of a common european house and that never became quickly enough. and it was interesting the hear how the u.s. knew that he hasn't firmed up his ideas and therefore they needed to move quickly before that could happen. and what eventually wins is what i refer to is the pre-fab model. that is the vision of washington, of coal and bush to take the prefabricated institutions of western unity, the transatlantic alliance of nato, the west german, which was supposed to self-destruct in the case of unity. it was supposed to be a temporary document. take these structures and duplicate them in the east. it's important when i say this to say i'm not trying to infer by calling them pre-fab that these were somehow infearier. quite the contrary, these are some of the most successful

that the quorled of international relations has ever seen. and it's currently a very unfashional term who see it as a sustainable way forward. so i'm not trying to imply these goods. what i'm trying to imply is these were shaped by the cold war, created by the west for the western alliance in the cold war. they were basically then duplicated and put down in the east. now, that is a perfectly fine solution. indeed, i see it as probably the only workable solution in this time period. but then you have to be honest about the problems that creates later, which is, is that fref pre-fab structure specific for the site that you just put it on? what problems are there with that on the new site? and so one of the problems that we see now still today is that the fact that there's been a perp pet wugs with a front line with russia which did not have to be the outcome of 1989 and 1990. so two quick quotes from james

baker. argued that russia, as the heir to the uss >>, if it embraced prefree markets and democracy should be part of nato. if you're going to have nato, you should extend it to russia. james baker also said that every solution to a big problem contains within itself the seeds of a future problem. and i found that to be a profoundly wise statement because the solution, the pre-fab solution which worked very well does contain within itself the seeds of problems that we're now seeing today in our relations with russia. thank you. >> thanks very much. bruce cummings. >> i'd like to thank the miller center and especially mel leffler for inviting me to this conference. i commute from charlottesville because my wife works here. so it's nice to have an excuse

to be here when i'm supposed to be in chicago on monday, tuesday. my paper i think has a fairly simple point that was also made in different ways by philip that the previous panel which is that the assumptions and premises that policy makers bring to bear, whether on predictable events or ones on a high probability or ones that are utterly surprising attempt to be very important in the way they filter information. i go on to talk about concepts and metaphors and how we sort of build up our assumptions. but the simplest line in the paper is the one about the plastic dummy that has sand in the bottom. those are the assumptions and we push the dummy over, it comes straight back up. now, in the paper i take four

case studies fairly briefly. one is 1945, the shattered world of 18945. the second is the fall of the berlin wall and the collapse of the soviet union that we've been talking about, and 9/11, and post cold war north korea. obviously, as an historian i bring to bear a different perspective external to the world of policy making and by virttu of working in chicago outside of the beltway debates. i've never been a policy maker. i've participated in a number of beltway debates. i don't remember winning any of them. but i have read thousands of policy papers in the course of my career both open and formerly top secret papers and that has taught me to be very humble before the task of making life and death decisions and conditions of imperfect information and often not enough time. i think george cannon probably

exemplifies the major point of my paper. george cannon was a person who had studied the turn of the century diplomacy of roughly around 1900. he had come to basic assumptions or logic that was fundamentally we are politic. that is what he brought to bear when he not only entered the foreign service but became head of policy planning in the state department in the late 19 40's. and even though there may be a billion e-mails in the bush administration, the most recent one, or a million papers in the truman administration, i think it's true that someone who knows what they're doing and has a clear logic that fits the events of the day and has access to a president or to a secretary of state like dean atchison rises above the daily flux of all the papers and these days e-mails.

kenen as you all know has a parse moan yuss theory that there were five industrial bases in the world that gave a country fundamental war making power on a major scale. we have four of them in our zones and the russians had one and containment was a fairly limited business of keeping things that way in the post war world. he also of course, as others have pointed out today, believed that through a deft and artful containment, that the soviet union over time would be forced to see the error of its ways and would change its system if not transform it or collapse. he was wrong for 40 years, roughly from 1947 to 89, or 91, and then suddenly he was right. as i say in the paper, this also is a typical situation.

i believe i've been right for 20 years that north korea is not going to collapse in the post war era but if it collapses tomorrow morning i'll look like a fool. i'll get to north korea a little bit later. once these things happen of course, something that a logic, world situation that kenen and others think they understand for four decades suddenly transforms itself when the object of your attention disappears. everyone has an explanation. the reagan arms buildup did it, or the bureaucratic collapse that others criticized coming into power with stalin did it. a whole host of other reasons can explain the collapse of the soviet union. but none of them have the virtue of having predicted it. i then get into maybe a question that hasn't come up yet today, not how do we know when we're right about strategy or something like that but how

do we know when we're wrong. and i think one of the most important aspects of trying to understand the world is to learn from our mistakes and learn from those times when we're wrong. there are a number of ways to figure this out. one of them is hagel cumming of history it slaps you in the face and you realize suddenly that your assumptions or your understanding of the world is in fact wrong. i think many people on the left on the world squail from 1989 to 1991 had a rude splap in the face from hagel's cunning of history. there are other exampleings, hour, where people get slapped in the face. a second way of thinking about learning how we're wrong is to use gorbechov's phrase, life will teach us. when he was forging ahead from 1985 when he came to power

until 1991, he often -- people would say how do you know if this will work? he would say life will teach us. i think that's a profound judgment because we all hopefully live long lives and as time goes by we find out whether our predictions, our theories, our strategies, carry any weight or not. but i think the most popular method of finding out we are wrong is having history prove it to us and we don't change one thing in our basic assumptions or beliefs. all you do is redefine the issue. i think many people on the left did that in 1989 and 1991. but i think we all do it all the time, that's the plastic dummy with the sand in the bottom part of our consciousness.

i think that history or life in gorbechov's sense can show us we're wrong and we continue with our basic assumptions because our world view, our assumptions are constituent to a world view. they embody our life experiences, character, and maybe even our soul. now, i don't have time in this prebtation to talk about each of the four cases that i take up in the paper. but, again, with dean atchison, present at the creation in 1945, you see someone who had evolved a very clear logic not for containing the soviet union but rather for reconstituting the world economy after the collapse of the world economy during the great depression and of course world war ii. in the paper i talk about his 1939 speech at yale about two months after hitler invaded poland. it's a remarkable speech that essentially lays out the core

principles of brent woods. free trade, principles to protect labor which didn't quite get into brent woods. the removal of exclusive or preferential trade arrangements. so on and so forth. i say in the paper, and this is something we could debate, that if you wanted to name one person who was constituent or the person who constituted a logic of the post world war ii era, it would be dean atchison, first in the treasury department and then the secretary of state, and then secretary of state under truman. so when you leap from 1945 to 1989 and the end of the cold war and you enumerate the institutions that were built in the mid 19 40's by atchison and

others, the world bank, the imf, the united nations, and a soft piece for japan and germany which was central to truman administration's policies, you see a world that could have been one world in the late 19 40's that turned into two worlds, a buy polar structure in 1947, but returns to one world in 1989 to 91. now, i haven't heard anybody else say this today. maybe it's so obvious that it doesn't wrire repetition -- require repetition, but it was possible in 1981 to see a long piece not in the cold war as john has said but a long piece developing in which it was ranking member impossible to imagine -- it was impossible to imagine the major powers not counting russia and china. china was not a major industrial power at that time, fighting each other. so my colleague, john mirshime,

is a friend of mine we have lunch every quarter at least, talking about the return of franco german enmitty with the french retargeting thy nuclear weapons on germany. and his back to the future article is simply i think profoundly mistaken and it's because of john mere shimer's assumption on how the world works. not everybody wanchts to agdries their power the way he thinks. so i don't want to dump particularly on john. the fact of the matter is that most of the realists got things wrong. so atchison wanted to reconstitute the world economy, number one. number two, he wanted a soft piece to reconstitute japan and germany as economic producers, engines of the world economy, but not ones with the former military clout. and then, by 1947 and 48, the third major problem was how to

contain the sofeyt union and its -- soviet union and allies. the one thing he never got straight was the enormous force deployed by anti colonial movements, in vietnam especially but in other places. it's hard for young people to recall how the towering influence of third world leaders just 30 years ago, and movements that obsessed the united states, again vietnam being a particularly good example. but atchison and ken and most of the people of their generation didn't believe that colonial people could raise a finger in their own defense or cause major problems. racial discrimination or racial prejudice was sometimes also involved with this. it was something entirely new in the world that you would have a 30 years war from 1945 to 75 that was fundamentally an anti-imperial war when all was said and done.

anyway, one's crital ball from the stand point of atchison or kenen would have been predictive of the containment of the soviet union and they would have been flabbergasted if someone told them you would fight two major washes in korea and vietnam, you would have a stalemate in one and lose the other. so the sense that i try to develop in my paper, the level of assumptions, just didn't pay attention to so many millions of people who were at that time in colonies trying to get out from under them. a number of other points i wanted to make, but i see i have about four minutes left. my analysis of september 11th can be announced very briefly. i more or less agree with john mueller that we have grossly overestimated the threat that came from that terrible act. on the other hand, i understand perfectly well what the policy makers, former policy makers in

this room were saying just a few minutes ago about the extraordinary shock that this produced, the unknown fears that something like the anthrax attack, whatever you want to call that, would generate. and the idea that you don't know what's around the corner. i can understand that. i couldn't sleep for five days after 9/11. i was reading the newspaper and watching the television all the time. so it was an extraordinarily shocking event. but one of the things we need to do is to be able to step back from teevepbts and ask ourselves if these 19 high jackers resemble something like the soviet union and nazi germany and they clearly did not at the time. but the passage of time, again life seems to have told us i think that they got lucky, as john said this morning.

north korea. you can read what i have to say about north korea in the paper. i think my encounter with the beltway consensus on north korea, a bipartisan one over the last 20 years, has been that the images people have and the assumptions they make about north korea get in the way of figuring out a policy that actually might have an impact on that regime. i mean, on any gin day it looks like an opera boof of communism that you can't possibly take seriously, but my research and my career has taught me that you underestimate the north koreans at your peril. that happened when mcartsdzyur said he could turn back the north koreans with one hand tied behind his back. a month later he was saying better art tillry and service than the japanese did in world war ii. it starts from there and just goes on. but if you have an independent army of over 1 million men, you

have a garrison state dug into some 15,000 underground national security chambers or facilities afone type or another, and a leadership that believes that both the sovedwrets and the chinese have screwed them in recent years, the sove yets all the way along. you can begin to appreciate why that regime hasn't collapsed. there, we might discuss that in the question and answer period. in my last minute, i will tell you, please read my last section which where i quote freed reck mitcha on feta for and the way in which we human beings have a wonderful and a terrible tendency to think in metaphoric terms, to say the word terrorist and in our minds conjures up someone who looks like bin laden, to say communist these days and smun who looks like kim jung i will

in his pants suits with elevator shoes. but in general, to constantly try to examine and reexamine and then reexamine again the premises, conceptses, metaphors, assumptions we bring to wear on our work because the whole point of my paper is those things are more important than the daily of what kind of information might be coming across your desk as a policy maker or a scholar. thank you very much for your attention. >> thank you. bill. >> well, thank you, john. thanks again to jeff and mel for inviting me to the conference. thanks to the miller center for organizing. and thanks for all of you for bearing up this day and still being here look so attentive as the last speaker on the last panel goors up. my paper holds a mirror up to us, independent, nongovernmental scholarly experts. for short i'll use the term

scholars or experts. i ask how well do we do when paradigm shattering events happen? that we didn't do a particularly good job of predicting as scholars. my question i ask is how well do independent scholars do at top policy evaluation after events occur that alter the foundations of a major geopolitical equilibrium sf how well do dwow? and the key is that the a policy evaluation involves an assessment of a criticism of a gin policy, the one the government is contemplating, and implies an endorsement or recommendation of another policy. in either case it implies a forecast. namely the world will be better off if you follow the policy i advocate. so how good are scholars at forecasting under these circumstances? i look look at these questions

in the events considered by this project. 9/11 and the berlin, fall of the berlin wall. i break these down into four events. four decisions. the immediate decision that happens after the shock, and then the key follow-on decision. so the immediate decision in 89 is german, decision to support unification in nato. in 2001 is the response to use force. the follow i don't know is to expand nato to central europe, the follow i don't know decision in the second case is to seek a serious resolution of the iraq problem by use of force if necessary. if you look at these four decisions, what stands out from the outside expert community is opposition and criticism. at three of the four decisions i think were opposed or strongly met with strong skepticism by strong majorities of outside scholarly experts.

that is, the only exception is the invasion of afghanistan, which i think among security scholars, scholars of international security was widely endorsed, that immediate post 9/11 decision. all the other three met with opposition. what i want to do in the next few minutes is look at the conventional wisdom, what do we generally think ought to be the case about scholarly policy evaluation, and then very quickly look at the three cases in which you saw very strong scholarly consensus against the government's policy and ask in each case how well did we do. how well did the scholars do. so that's where i'm going. tonight talk about the conventional wisdom, which among scholars, is that the government really ought the pay attention to us. now, of course normally how can the government pay attention to us?

we're a squabbling bunch of this and that. but if the scholarly community, the independent experts converge on a position, a consensus among experts outside the government, at what the government is doing is a bad idea, why, there the view among scholars is they ought to pay heed to this consensus. and why? well, in part it's that scholars bring some pretty good assets to the table. they are independent, they are not necessarily in thraud to higher level bureaucrats, so that problem of toteying that does exist in government, i've heard where underlings say what they think their superiors want to exist. they're not involved too deeply in party politics. they tend to be democrat but not generally party people weded to a party