about the watch listing pro@@@@r because it's a constant collaboration between the various organizations. nctc relies upon information that's provided by the intelligence and law enforcement communities. the tsc reliss on nctc to do the anlitcal work and provide the information that we forward to the screeners. hr the utility of the watch listing process is only effective when it's officially disseminated to those partners. )

agencies to review the nominations to determine if they need inclusion into the screening process. there is for major u.s. government systems that support the tsc and the tsdb. department department of state counselor lookout system or class is used for passports and visa applications. department of homeland security tax system is used for border import entry systems. the no-fly select the list is used to the transportation security administration and the fbi's national crime information center is used for domestic law enforcement encounters. the criteria for inclusion into each one of these systems is tailored by the mission, the legal authorities and the information technology requirements and limitations of those systems. before december 25, the tsc have

not received the watchlist for umar farouk abdulmutallab and was not watchlist that as you mentioned. following the attempted terrorist attack, the president has initiated review of white u.s.a. was able to board a northwest flight 253. as a result, the tsc was given to mission for two instructions per the first was to conduct a review in the tsdb of any individual within the tsdb that had a visa, beginning with the no-fly list and all the way down. that process has been completed. the second was to develop recommendations on whether adjustments were needed for the watchlist in nomination including biographical or the no-fly and select the list. to do so, the tsc convenience policy working group, which is consist of representatives from the national counterterrorism center, central intelligence agency, national security

agency, the federal bureau of investigation department of homeland security, department of defense, department of justice and department of state to achieve this interagency consensus. that process is underway and the tsc is working with the interagency partners to develop recommendations for consideration to the president. but the direction of the white house and in connection with nctc, the tsc is made temporary to counter the threat that was observed on christmas day. as a result, the threat related target group is identified individuals from specific hydra countries or to residing and tsdb were added to selectee or tsdb. the tsc remains focused on fulfilling the mandate to share terrorist screening information with our domestic and on partners. we have a standing commitment to improve our operational processes, to enhance our human capital summit to increase our technical capabilities and to continue to protect americans from terrorist threats while

protecting civil liberties and protecting privacy issues. the tsc and the watch listing has been a vital tool in the counterterrorism in the united states and will continue to do so. senator lieberman, ranking member collins, the torture questions. >> thank you, mr. healy. next will go to ministry in paris, transportation at the department of homeland security department of homeland security. thank you for the work you've been doing as the acting administrators. the president made the nomination which will come before this committee in congress to be direct your administrator and we hope to move back as quickly as possible. we appreciate your excellent work in the inch round. >> thank you, mr. chairman. good morning chairman lieberman and plenty under his collins and the committee. i thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the transportation security administration. i like to begin by saying the

tsa's core mission as one of counterterrorism. we continue the work we began eight years ago with the establishment of tsa to close vulnerabilities with new technology and new processes and a complex aviation security regime. tsa operates in a high threat environment day in and day out, which drives our officers and ourselves to be ever vigilant. the attempted attack on northwest flight 253 on christmas day was a stark reminder that there are still those intent to do us harm. as we continue to harden elements of the system, we know that terrorists will look for gaps or exceptions they can exploit. the unthinkable is an opportunity for them. the can of the device used on december 25, it was very clearly -- cleverly constructed and was intentionally hid it in a very sensitive part of the individual's body to avert detection. we know that terrorists are studying our security measures and will exploit our social

norms to their advantage. the men and women of tsa live with that reality every day. the threat of an improvised explosive device or an ied getting onto an airplane is a significant focus for us. in 2006, we overhauled the training of our transportation security officers to focus on finding ied's. in 2007, we use proven science to train and deploy our first behavior detection officers to identify people with hostile intent and refer them for additional screening. we've also began testing advanced imaging technology in 2007 to detect both metallic and nonmetallic threats hidden on the body. tsa develops the requirements for this technology with the transportation security love at dhs and with the private sector. because of the nearly three years of work we ever be put into this, we currently have 43 machines already in place at 20 airport and we will field

approximately 500 unit wide by the end of this calendar year. and because ied can be hidden both on the body and in bags, we've also deployed by the liquid scanners, advanced technology x-xray and explosive trace detection units to enhance our officers capability to find explosives. the u.s. government is actually the world leader in testing and deploying these technologies. we're working with the national labs and the private sector to push the detection capabilities to even greater degrees and we will continuously test and trainer personnel. we are also sharing information with our international partners to assist other nations in raising the love of that security. we are giving this mission every ounce of our energy. we continue to employ our layered approach to security to deter, disrupt and stop attacks. what we are facing is not one man on one plane. we are facing a patient enemy who is determined to attack u.s.

assets in the u.s. homeland. we on the 450 u.s. airports, tsa also works with our international partners to secure the entire global aviation network. because tsa does not conduct the actual screening overseas, we instead rely upon foreign governments, airport authorities and carriers to conduct such screening. tsa does conduct inspection of foreign airports with the last point of departure for flights inbound to the united states. these inspections are to the standards set by the international civil aviation organization note is by ko. tsa also imposes the additional screening members for a carriers flying into the united states. both before and after the christmas day of the bank, we have enjoyed a very strong working relationship with air carriers, foreign and domestic, and we greatly appreciate their commitment to keeping air travel safe here and it is a testament to the strength of that

relationship that on december 25, within 5 hours of tsa issuing new security to this to increase screening of passengers coming to the united states, 95% of our foreign partners were in compliance. one of the key tools we have two keep known terrorists off of their planes to secure flight. i am pleased to say that many large carriers are now participating with the rest scheduled to be on board by the end of this calendar year. >> i just want to take a moment and describe the secure flight for the record and for those who are watching or listening. >> yes, sir. once the secure flight is operational, it will actually that all of the passengers booked on every flight 72 hours in advance of the flight. so that will actually give both tsa and of law-enforcement and airport and air carrier officials 72 hours to actually determine and further inspect somebody who shows up that would

be of interest come either somebody who shows up as a no-fly or select d. the program is also going to help with passengers who have the false positive matches, where they have the same name because the system will actually that using additional data elements including the date of birth, a passport number and a redress number if the passenger has filed for redress. the system, so that will insure that passengers were actually cleared will no longer have difficulty printing off working passes. it will also provide much greater consistency because today the air carriers actually that against the no-fly and select the list. and once it is fully operational, tsa will do the vetting, which will give us a higher quality of the vetting. we are, tsa is an end-user of the no-fly and select the list

and we will continue to work very closely with our law-enforcement intel partners to improve the information sharing efforts. our mission requires us to continuously challenge ourselves and we are dependent upon the cooperation and participation of stakeholders and passengers in order to keep this complex aviation system secure. we are extraordinarily grateful to the support of our partners and all levels of government, industry representatives are international partners, the your and especially the traveling public. i would like to express the appreciation for this committee support of tsa, our programs and i'm particularly honored to serve alongside the everyday heroes in tsa. i'd happy to answer questions. >> things, mr. entry. i appreciate your testimony. finally on this panel, and david aguilar, we've got an acting deputy nominee for the commissioner of the finance committee. we hope to have consumer for it

to happen. we thank you for her excellent service. as you said i usually see you in uniform. it's good to see you either way and welcome your testimony now. >> thank you, sir and good morning. chairman lieberman, ranking member collins, thank you for the opportunity to appear today as part of this team discuss the u.s. customs had taken the response to the terrorist attack on northwest flight 253. the attempted attack on december 25 is a powerful reminder to all of us that terrorists will go to great lengths to defeat the security measures that up and put in place september 11, 2001. today is like to take a little bit of time to describe the world of cdp currently performs the aviation and national security and enhanced security measures implemented in the aftermath of the christmas day attack you as part of our efforts to screen passengers bound for the united states, cdp is a consumer of the u.s. governments consolidated watch list, which are used to help

keep potential terrorists off flights bound for the united states into identified identify travelers that require additional screening. travelers found the united states are required to either have a visa issued by the department of state or traveling under the visa waiver program and then we'll try to travel authorization through the electronic system for travel authorization. after that is a web-based system to which they must apply for travel authorization to the united states, enables cdp to contact enhanced screening of visa waiver program country applicants and dancer travel to the united states in order to assess whether they could pose a risk to our country. when i travel of purchases a ticket for travel to the united states, a passenger name records may be generated in the airlines reservation system. pnr data contains various elements, including itinerary, co-travelers, changes to the reservation ends may include payment information, type of payment information.

cdp receives data from the airline at various intervals between 72 hours for it to departure and including at the scheduled departure time. cdp officers utilize what we call the automated targeting system for passengers to evaluate the pnr data against targeting rules. it is important to note the pnr data received by airline staffers and may be incomplete and is inconsistent. on the day of departure, when individual checks check them for their intended flight, the basic biographic information for the individual's passport is collected by the air carrier and submitted to cdp's advanced passenger information system. the data is far more complete than pnr data. dhs then screens the information on international flights to or from the united states against the psd be watchlist. as wells against history information records of loss or stolen passports in part immigration or customs violations.

at nine airports in seven countries, cdp officers are stationed under the immigration advisory program that senator collins mentioned, working with or prevent passengers from boarding the planes themselves. while flights are en route to the united states, cbp continues to evaluate the data submitted by the airlines. at this point, a further assessment on individuals' admissibility into the united states is conducted and a determination is made whether an individual requires additional screening prior to admission. upon arrival in the united states, travelers present themselves to an officer for inspection. based on the information garnered during the inflight analysis as well as the on-site officer's determination, a determination is made whether a traveler should be referred for

a secondry examination. cdp has expanded the information referred to our iep officers to include in the state department records that >> can you give us an explanation of that? in plain language. what didn't happen which would happen now under the change? in other words, what didn't happen with abdulmutallab which would happen now. >> what did not happen then, senator, is that the information provided by the visa office that have information related to what the father had -- was not provided to our iep officers. that kind of information, which basically called across the

refusal is now passed on to iep officers as another of everyday business. >> what happened to it with abdulmutallab? they went to the state department? >> the state department provided a by way of their class system into our text system but never got to our iep officer because it was on the watch list. >> tell us what iep is. >> i'm sorry, that is the immigration advisory program. >> as cdp officer in amsterdam. >> so now that information would go immediately to that person from the embassy? >> he goes from the embassy to our tax system as well refer to our national targeting center for aggregation if he will with all the other information that we have an unmet information and total total is passed on to our officers stationed. >> is there a filter -- i'm

going to give you extra time. is there a filter applied at that time quite standards of what should be included? i think we all agree looking back his father came in, respected man, should've gone right on the watchlist. but in it's possible somebody could've come in, didn't know him well, that he was acting suspicious. >> given the same situation, any kind of derogatory information related to terrorism by the department of state is now put into our system. that's a positive refusal that is now captured and provided to our officers. >> towheaded finish her statement. >> engendered ten, 2010, began prescreening to non-immigration advisory program location. officers assigned to original carrier liaison groups working with our national targeting center now make recommendations to foreign carriers that deny boarding to individuals

traveling to the united states who have been identified as being national security related threats that are ineligible for admission were traveling on fraudulent or fragile he obtained documents. cdp has a history views of all incoming passenger manifest based on threats of an increased post primary operations. to intelligence sharing agreement tdp now continues to work with our counterparts in the u.k., canada and mexico and is well a cdp cache is around the world to share information as necessary and appropriate. while we address the circumstances behind this the specific incident we must also recognize the evolving threat posed by terrorists and take action to ensure the defenses continue to evolve in order to defeat them. we live in a world of ever-changing medicine we must move the aggressively as possible both to find and fix security flaws and anticipate future vulnerabilities. chairman lieberman, ranging member collins, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity and we look for 20 questions that you might have.

>> thanks, mr. aguilar. we'll start with seven minute rounds of questions. i appreciate the testimony and particularly the things that have been changed since the 25th. one of the things that's in the process of review and i'll ask you in a moment with the deadlines are as this question that mr. travers referred to is how do people get on the terrorism watch list and then how are they used? and let me say that as i heard you describe and kind of information, mr. chair, was we might have somebody been a terrorist or associated with terrorist activities. part of my reaction is your right, the first two or three were pretty clear-cut cases. when you touch the greater areas i would say that they were

grayer if the question was whether you were going to arrest somebody or capture them in a war on terrorism context. but for me they were not grayer if the question as whether they raised enough suspicion to be put on a terrorism watch list and subject that person to a secondary review, including a secondary screening of his or her body before letting them enter a plane. to understand what i'm saying in reaction to that? been i guess, sir, certainly. it's part of the issue that director healy will talk to you about here the question for us i think eventually comes down to one of allen's. if we provide every individual

and alternative spelling and alternative name grant and they are pushed to the airlines for eventual secondary, given the way the mathematics work out, you are starting to look at the potential for millions and millions of names and do what i will does that become too difficult for the airlines to handle. and i think that's one of the issues that were struggling with an interagency group that's looking at this particular problem. >> i want to urge you that my own point of view is this. i understand this can be inconvenient at some point, even burdensome for the airlines. but after all, we're looking at questions of national security here. at some level, frankly, i say too bad the airline has to do the extra work to stop somebody from getting on a plane who might blow up the plane and kill everybody on it and a lot of people on the ground as would've

been the case if the bomb went off in the detroit bound plane on december 25th. so it's not that there's not a concern, but i think ultimately ingest the terms that mr. healy mentioned to the classic balance for the way that security or in some sense convenience or business operations on the other, it seems to me in these cases that the great weight has to be given to security. >> yes, sir. certainly i believe the federal government is claiming very far for putting people on lists. and that has been a bit of a sea change since 1225. i've been doing this now for several years and i will say i'm 100% certain i never had anybody tell me that the list is too small before christmas. and it's getting bigger and will get bigger. >> i appreciate that and i think it's the right way to go. mr. healy, one of the things that struck me after

december 25, that we unfortunately all learned from that is that there were these four levels of list that tide was the largest. if you want to set to list it didn't subject to two and a secondary screen for a closer look if you try to get on the plane that were focusing on not for the moment. if you were on the tsdb, terrorist screening database, it seemed apparently you were either subjected to screening. but if you got onto the selected list, you are higher level of evidence and then the no-fly of course you would just went about to get on the plane automatically if you were one of those people. and picking up and away from what the exchange that i just had with mr. travers. to me it seems based on the waiting of the consequences of letting a terrorist on the plane as opposed to the inconvenient

as stopping. if only for a secondary screening, i wonder why we're not consolidating those lists. i mean obviously there's so much evidence that and it is on no-fly list, then that's a separate question and not to be a separate list here at but to my way of thinking there ought to be mx list of a real broadway including the tsdb, which is that there is any evidence of connection with terrorism we have to at least protect everybody else by subjecting that person to a secondary screening. do you agree or disagree? >> i would agree and respectfully disagree at the same time. and let me explain. i was under the same position when i first got to the terrorist screening center several years ago as a deputy. the challenge, senator, is with the list and how we screen it. right now the limitation we have is that the airlines screen it. as mr. mazzini has talked about,

they're going to come on board a meta-discussion we do have a tsa, dhs, they terrorist screening center about the advantages you have a secure flight. unfortunately the limitation we have a secure flight with the selected list and the no-fly list is we rely upon the airlines to do the screening. that means, and as we all talk about, it's a balance between civil liberties and protection of the american people. the problem is that when we share that list, we shared not only with the domestic carriers, but we also share with the foreign carriers. if you share the entire list with the foreign carriers, you have the problem of the security list and individuals knowing that their watch listed. that is a tremendous security problem. so again it's is the balancing act right now are to secure flight. and again i think we need a dialogue than once a secure flight is on board and ago when i believe i will be at the end of this year and we've been working very diligently with tsa on that. but right now with the

limitations we have on the screening was secure flight, without secure flight, we give it to the airlines and that includes foreign airlines. that is potentially given up the foreign carriers. >> so what you're saying is you worry if someone is on a terrorism watch list they get subjected to secondary screening, then they know they're on a terrorism watch list. is that what you mean quite >> no, sir. if they're on the no-fly list and a terrorist gets on the plane and is not about come he clearly knows he's on the watchlist. >> right, but you were talking about the privacy of the list when they go to foreign carriers. that argument some of the people and list might learn there on the list and i would take them off that they're being watched. >> right now tsa in the air carriers randomly screen people. the vast majority of people like 78,000 that have applied for redress believed their watch listed. the vast majority of them, like 99.3% are not.

they are randomly screened just because you are subject to additional scrutiny doesn't mean you're on the watchlist. you're not just screamed because you are the watchlist. that's a good cover for the watchlist. >> and the issue is not the screening. the issue is where giving the complete list. i don't think it's prudent to get the complete list of the air carriers with the problem that it may be exposed to different countries, to foreign countries. that the challenge. but here's the other challenge obviously. and i know we share this goal. if you don't give that list to a foreign carrier, then it's possible somebody on that list, who was a suspected terrorist will get on the plane. >> and that's the balance that you strike. that's where there's a particular criteria for selecting the criteria for no-fly and because of the limitations of the list in who we have to share with, that's the balance. i could give you an example of an individual that gives you his

watch listed came in the country and changed his identity because he knew he was watchlist it. we only found out because we give the list that the individual was arrested. his fingerprints were taken and went to our prestigious fbi fingerprint department and he was identified as one of the known or suspected terrorists. he knew he was watchlist it, actively changed his identity because of that. it's about balance is that i would caution the committee about giving away the entire list. that's going to create hazards and security issues for us as well. >> gaffe. i hear you but i still feel that the obligation we have too everybody else on the plane is to check anybody we have reason to believe is suspicion of being a terrorist because of the immediate threat of action on that plane. but my times that. we'll come back to that.

senator collins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. %f @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ i guess i should say, that it is not practical or perhaps even fair to subject everyone who is on the list to secondary screening. . .

for additional scrutiny? >> in short, senator collins, yes. and in fact, that's part of the deliberation that this interagency group has discussed and is making recommendations to the administration about how to deal with, >> i also want to touch further about the standards this mr. travers touched on in his testimony. this is difficult because you do want to treat people fairly, and also you don't want to create a system that is so burden some and so immense that if you're trying to watch everybody, you miss people you should be watching. i understand that.

on the other hand, when i look at the minimum standards for getting listed on the various watch lists, they trouble me because they clearly exclude abdul mute la. our embassy did not meet the minimum standards. there is an impawlentying standard that says only those who associate with known or suspected terrorists -- it actually says that those who only associate with known or suspected terrorists but have nothing to support terrorism are ineligible for the no-fly list. it is easy to see why he didn't make the list. he was associating with known terrorists, but you couldn't

pin point a specific action. that troubles me if that is the standard. so i would like to ask you, mr. healy, and you, mr. travers. i know you are looking at that standard, but in your judgment, is that standard too low for listing someone -- or too high i guess is the way i should look at it. does it exclude people who should be on the selectee list? be on the selected list? >> again, senator collins, some of the lessons learned because of the christmas day event was taken into consideration. some of the things you've already mentioned such as giving credibility to a source and allowing the individual that is interfering that source to be able to identify credibility. we are taking a look at the single source reporting and

adding things like if you have a respected member of the community, a father talking about a son that's something we did take into consideration some yes, ma'am, all of those issues we identified as points of learning and lessons learned from the event were taken into consideration and coming up with recommendations again to the administration about not necessarily how to change the standard. the reason sufficient standard is very low and the essentially if you have credible information and reportable intelligence this individual was associated with terrorism they are going to go on the watch list but how we implement and some of the restrictions we had specifically about single source reporting labels things like that were looking at and making recommendations and candidly we've been working very hard at that. we've been meeting two or three times a week and we've got very short deadlines and i think we are going to have a product within the next couple weeks if not the end of the month or next month.

>> mr. travers, should an individual or someone on the terrorist list be selected for additional screening? >> i don't know i have a solid answer for you. i certainly believe that -- i would associate myself with a director speed's comments we are adding flexibility so can deal with a single source reporting individuals who might not fall within the black letter description you had, we have asked the collectors what does this mean? would this mean for you if you were been tasked to provide into the system nominations on individuals were just described as a seceding with a terrorist, and we don't have an answer to that. i've been in analyst in the community 30 years. my guess is that is going to be very large number and i would come back to the comment he made to open up the conversation which was you don't want to have

so many people on this list that you stop looking at important ones because you're looking at those that are really weighed down on the malaise. but in general, we are enhancing the little flexibility any individual has to put on the list and that is a good thing. >> one of the issues have really troubled me is conversation that i had with a member of the intelligence community who said you don't understand, we get reports all the time from disgruntled relatives, and nine short it's true. but in this case it is a highly respected member of the community whom the nigerian intelligence forces have felch for and referred to our i want to quickly, mr. travers ask you one more question on this round. you mentioned in your testimony, and i've heard this

before, that thousands of analysts, everyone in the intelligence community who is an analyst had access to those two critical data pieces. but there's a big difference between everybody having access to this huge database versus the individuals who are tasked with connecting the dots. so i would like to get a better sense, so i can understand this. i don't think it's a good answer to say well, thousands of people could have found this information because that is not the job of thousands of people. whose job -- and i don't mean specific names -- but whose job was it to connect those data pieces? >> it is a very complicated question, so you are going to have to indulge me a second. my only point during my opening

statement that i do highlight that while information sharing is important, the people didn't connect the dots. the function of the terrorist identities group and my particular group who support the watch list function, in a perfect world, when we said up tide and others several years ago, i envisioned that we would build dossiers on people. if reduce travers was a terrorist, my people would go out and update that database and ensure that russ travers' record was as compleed as it possibly could be. three years ago we came to the conclusion that because of the growth in the data coming into the ntnc, we were getting thoses of reports a day, that we were not resourced even

closely. so we made a decision. it was a risk decision, and as a result, we focused far more on populating information into tide that was being pushed to us and quality controlling it and not being able to do in-depth analysis. what that meant was the young analyst who received that cable, she researched that person and got zero hits. it didn't exist anywhere else. what do we do? conceptually what we are trying to do is lower the bar. so again you have this sea of dots. a lot of them aren't exploited. we believe ntct's role is to do that. how do you deal with the names? we have taken two approaches.

one within my group and one within our analytic element. within my group what we are doing is building, per the president's direction, an effort that will do directed enhancement of records so that we are building the proposal that will have analysts that will do nothing but that. when faruk's name comes in, you have somebody who is below the noise level, they will be focused on going out and searching across all databases to see if we the government know something about him that can get him to director healy's watch list. we are building something called pursuit teams, and those exist in our analytic element. currently about 40 people drawn from the community, as well as ntct, and they have a quasi-targeting function in that they are not producers of intelligence, which is what ntct generally does, but they

are taking straws in the wind. this is interesting, or nigerians going to yemen or a phone number. and they are digging down into that sea of data and following it through to completion. completion may be that they are nominated for a watch list, or the bureau opens a case on them or something. this is an experiment, but it is borne of the believer that there is so much information out there that we need people who are going to go down and focus on that information that is below that which is readyly identifiable as terrorism. >> thank you. >> senator brown? >> thank you, mr. chairman. as i mentioned earlier -- and thank you once again for allowing me to make a brief statement. this is something i think about every day. and especially since we had that issue around christmas time. i have often wondered, is it a resourcing problem, a tools and resource problem?

do you need more of both to expand the type of coverage we need to help? is there something we are missing that we can provide to the various agencies in terms of tools and resources? let's start with that question if we could. to anyone who feels it is appropriate to answer it. i'm looking at all of the age says. >> i think it is a whole series of issues. there is partly a resource issue. if you want to explore that, then there is a resource issue to it. there is a limitation of the names based system so all of us are moving towards biometrics as quickly as we can because that is part of the shoe. there are so some technical issues for sure. those technical issues merge with policy and kind of privacy issues in a hurry. i mentioned the 30 networks we have coming into to ntct. you can't just company mingle that data. why? because you have a tremendous

amount of personal data. this gets into a very difficult area for us in terms of bleeding over between foreign and domestic. those are issues that mike is looking particularly hard at. as i mentioned, we can do google-like searches across some of the foreign networks. but you can't do a search that goes out against the f.b.i. stuff and the c.i.a. material and pull things back. they are born of privacy, policy and security issues. cia material and pulls things back and so those technical limitations are born of privacy and policy and security issues. >> if i may add the challenge is also has mr. travers pointed out, trying to identify these terrorists there is no driver's license bureau where bin laden goes to and says i need my terrorist card. these individuals are identified by fragments of information. they are identified by a source saying this guy is involved in it so it's not a black-and-white

system. it is a system we continue to search and try to identify these nuggets of information to these individuals are watch listed. it is a balancing act between civil liberties in the protection of the american people so it is a challenge and because of the naim based system it is always going to be a challenge. some cases you need on the no-fly list unit name and date of birth. the reason is that is how we identify people. so it is a challenge just by the whole process and trying to identify these individuals. it's not a challenge that with this particular group we understand it. every day i talked to my staff and tell them if you make one mistake people could die and all we've got to do is wait to become a quote mystique. we've got to be right every single time and all the terrorist has to do is -- of he's got to do is be right one time. it's always going to be a challenge. resources are always a challenge. >> i guess what i'm trying to ask you is obviously we are dealing in budgetary issues coming up and the safety and

security of the american -- anyone traveling in the united states is one of my top@@@@@@@ ,,

where the persons who think they are either on the no fly with a selected list can apply it is an online process. and we work with the tsc to make sure that the individual is actually cleared. and they then get a letter saying that they are cleared. they get their redress number so that when they book travel in the future they can actually reference that number and it should automatically clear them so they don't have a continuing problem. >> so in terms of the key whereby direct them -- system can direct them to the tsa website and there is a link for the application to apply for the redress. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> anwar i appreciate senator brown's question and these questions to come up and it seems to me though there clearly

is a problem on false positives, such as the case is an air of me more such similar names and phone book or the cases we've heard about here where the grand mom gets stopped because she has a similar name of this boy stopped a few times. but that can't be an excuse for limiting the names on the watch list because there is some reason to put somebody else with that same name on the watch list and they belong there. and so i think the redress process that you have set up as a good one and i don't know what platitude you can give your tsa people or the cbp at this site or airlines at the site of injury. anytime you have latitude that's a problem, but it just seems to me if you have a seven, eight, or nine-year-old boy that is the same name as someone on the list it's pretty obvious that he's not the one and he ought not be stopped from getting on the plane.

>> exactly, senator. and in fact what will happen as particularly when a child shows of the ticket counter there is an actual call made between the carrier and tsa to immediately rectify the problem. so it does -- we try to do it in real time as well so that we can clear up this kind of -- >> so this -- that case wouldn't happen again. >> it doesn't happen that frequently, sir. >> so it has become an urban myth. thank you. >> said letcher carper, welcome. senator coffman commented on the disproportionate representation that the state of delaware now house on this committee. >> our congressman wants to be on it, too, probably. that's for another day. [laughter] >> thank you. our accounting executive from delaware. we welcome ted kaufman. just came from a meeting with

him and a bunch of folks from our state and ensure he will get here if he can. i want to welcome senator brown. delighted you are with us and looking forward to taking [inaudible] -- go to afghanistan and pakistan next month. sometimes our stuff go on staff notes and one of our staff, senator lieberman's stuff and senator voinovich's staff and the places they've visited where yemen and saudi arabia and they spend a little bit of time in holland and germany, and one of the things i will get into saudi arabia and yemen but one of the things they heard about in holland especially with respect to the amsterdam airport was the kind of behavior a system or profiling that takes place some of those airports to hit the

israelis are noted for these techniques but i'm told you have airport security officials who try to identify and prevent bad guys from getting on airplanes and causing trouble. they do it in part by observing that passengers and by understand airports position while trained personnel at various points to ask questions politely to scrutinize expressions to check out body language and speech patterns. i don't know if it is a good idea or not. the israelis think it is and some other countries do as well. but i would just be interested in hearing of the thoughts of our witnesses today on this type of screening and to ask if you think there is something that we can learn from what some of these other countries are doing. >> yes, senator. actually tsa has worked with the israelis and other countries and

we do have a behavior detection program that we have deployed across u.s. airports. we have several hundred officers are trained as behavior detection officers and they actually look for the behavior anomalies that you described. we have found it to be -- >> can you be more specific? can you give some idea what you're looking for? >> the are -- most of it is a sensitive security information that i could not but we would be happy to provide you a briefing in a closed session but they do look for anomalous behavior's that should not be displayed by the every day traveler and when they do that they will respectfully approach the passenger and engage them in some simple conversation depending upon what they gleaned from the discussion they may actually refer them for secondary screening in the checkpoints and we have several hundred of these across most of

the major the largest airports here in the united states and i also would say that what we are continuing to learn is sharing best practices from our counterparts like the israelis. it is really is a global effort and particularly in the aftermath of december 25th's event what we have seen is the willingness of our global partners to actually come to us and the israelis to learn about our behavior detection program and also to learn about the technology that we are now deploying across u.s. airports and i am happy to say that since 1225 we have had at least eight is not closer now to a dozen countries that are now going to be deployed in this advanced technology on the westbound gates and terminals. so discredited of information sharing and best practices we are doing. >> any other witnesses on to

comment on this please? >> the customs and border protection both foreign and domestic where they were foreign deployed to get same type of training is given. it may very little bit but the same type basic training is given to the officers in order to detect that imam wallace -- and, less to being comforted by officers. >> me one more question if i could. a fellow named dr. steven flynn who i think is fairly well known and respected homeland security expert recently met with my staff and with me. he said something that hit home regarding aviation security. he said basically buying going to quote him. he said searching for that needlelike a needle in the haystack, searching for that needle we need to take some hay off the stack and ensure that the screen is logical and fair approach. that is his quote.

and this may follow up on something that senator brown was saying. but i think what we were asking him to exploit what he meant he was essentially saying for example if you see a great grandmother and a six-year-old child we want to place less scrutiny on them than someone else who is medium rare or older and then someone who might realistically pos more of a threat. let me just ask you this rossides -- de pronounced naim rossides? >> yes pure islamic has your name ever been mispronounced? >> yes, sir. [laughter] >> how about today? [laughter] >> nope. >> if he would -- the was are notified based on the age of the passenger and that sort of thing. >> well, sir, the challenge that we have is balancing the requirement to screen all passengers and to actually focus

our officers' attention on the right passengers per say as you describe. i will tell you based on the intel that i see every day that i would not sit here and say there would never be an elderly person that could be used to be a carrier of a bomb on an airplane. i have seen at around the world people used for this purpose who are in wheelchairs. i have seen them used young people and that is our challenge. but what we have designed here in the united states and what our global partners are doing with us is a multi earlier approach so that we really do, through our behavior detection program, through the use of advanced technology, through the yousaf what we're doing randomly with the detection technology we are looking at passengers may be a second time or giving some random and predictability to the

system so that we are not always predictable and you can't always guarantee somebody of an age type or certain characteristic will or will not be screened but it is a challenge and the intel we would modify what we do and sometimes tsa does get criticized why are we focusing on ways or something. i will tell you what we do is based on the intelligence that we are getting. >> would be appropriate to share with the broad public, with us in the broader public some examples of things that you found. tollways or anything in wheelchairs'? i don't know. is their something you can share with us? i heard on npr on the train station last week they were reporting on a young child, two-year-old or something may be handicapped. the father was a policeman and was scrutinized.

can you give us some examples of why it's important we do that scrutiny? >> yes, sir. >> every day i will tell you we see things coming through checkpoints in the united states that are amazing that people are trying to secrete either on their persons and wheelchairs' with canes people will conceal long knives, swords in cannes. we have at least a couple of times a year in the holidays we find guns and teddy bears. we find component parts and children's plays. it is amazing what we see, and we actually do put out on our web site information that will identify things that we are looking for and why, explaining at least why we have to take a closer look at some of these things. the officers get information on a daily basis in the shift

briefings about those kinds of three common items that we are actually seeing people conceal things in trying to get on board the aircraft. one of the things we see as our response of the particularly this year as we are rolling out the set fans imaging technology is our very significant responsibility to educate the traveling public about the benefits of this technology, other options to go through this technology were not and really to understand why this is an increased detection capability for us which will actually insure greater safety. but we do try to inform the public when we can on things that we are seeing and why things are subject to the screening as they are. >> that is very helpful. thank you very much. thinks mr. chairman. >> thank you. that was helpful. i get travelling public will be encouraged to hear about the behavior identification work is being done without apparent

knowledge. the other thing i do want to say, referring to this briefly in another regard, that the more we move to a buy a metric system of identification, obviously the problem of the false positives is reduced or eliminated totally and that is another reason i try to do that as quickly as we can. mr. healy, want to clarify, did i hear you say that you thought that the process of review of the standards for inclusion into the use of a terrorism watch list and use of the watch list that is being carried out pursuant to president obama's directed post christmas day bomber that you thought would result in recommendations by the end of this month? or were you referring to something else? >> no, sir. i don't want to cut the group off but we've been working very hard and i think we are wrapping it up right now.

we've got very tight deadlines, much tighter than i would have expected but the team is/)f#@

>> we look forward to the results. appreciate your work. mr. chair i just want to clarify something in that regard. director later before the committee last time i'm pretty sure said that the no-fly list that is the top category was expanded in the aftermath of christmas day bombing attempt. can you describe what has changed? >> i will let charley dever two directors healy. there have been significant numbers of people read it to the no-fly list and since mike was here for more. >> mr. healy? >> just so we are cleared the criteria has not changed. what has happened that i think mr. leiter was referring to is

based on the intelligence as a result of that we were directed to the number of people in selected and no-fly very similar to senator collins what your concerns were. as a result of that -- >> to move from no fly -- move them from tied to the selectees and selecting and no flight -- >> what about the lists? >> it was of you identify this -- >> was the tick? -- the edges. tsdb. based on the threat reporting individuals wer >> so there was new reporting, or was it that you went back and took a second look without changing the standards. >> it was a culmination of the threat that we had and the intelligence. and as a result of that, we were directed by the white house to move a number of people, and the process right now in that movement is a deeper dive on all those

individuals that the agency and the f.b.i. is participating on to determine if there is any additional information, and that process is on going. >> right. but the other process that you are working on that we talked about a moment ago that you will >> the to mr. brennan and the deputy's committee at the white house is the standards for inclusion on the various lists? >> yes, sir. >> and the way in which those lists are used? >> yes, and to address the issues that mr. collins pointed out. that should you be able to judge creblet. issues like that have been raised and are being afforded. >> let me ask primarily, mr. healy and travers, for some clarity on these questions. i was surprised when you indicated that the google-like serves that senator collins and

i referred to can now be done by the national counterterrorism center. we are custom todd this remarkable ability to serve an enormous number of databases quickly and have the information come up quickly. my impression from mr. leiter is that now your analysts at the national counterterrorism center -- and let's simplify this. let's take faruk. they have to dig down sblo each database, is that correct? >> yes, sir. there are 30 offer so networks that come into ntct. we clearly cannot do a going of-like search across all of them for some of the policy and privacy reasons i suggested. my analysts can do a

google-like search that will take them out to the terrorist message traffic that will come in from many of the organizations that will go into a data repository. they can search across that and tide -- actually what they find is the same problem you have if you do a google search at home. you may get so many reports back. you get thousands, anna doesn't help you very much either. there is no question that we could have -- an analyst could have after the fact fashioned a query that would have been very precise, and you would have gotten the limited reporting that lists on faruk. the challenge is knowing what you are searching for. >> i understand the problems and accept their reality, but when you answered the question just now, you referred again to the privacy concerns about searching all the databases at once. do we have the technological

capable at the national countertism center to quickly search the 30 networks you have coming in? >> the technological capabilities flow from the policy enablers, and there are questions on both sides that limit our ability to implement a technological solution. i think if our c.i.o. was here, she would tell you that the technical issues are not the long poll -- pole in the tept. >> that is encouraging and discouraging. just as you said, one mistake and people get killed. one time a terrorist breaks through the networks, and that is all they have to do to be successful. the reason it was encouraging is we didn't have the light

equipment, the right information technology. but you are saying more to me that it is a question of standards. we have something that stops your analysts that stop your analysts from searching all networks at once. our analysts have been looking forward to how you build a data layer that will get you do searches through all of the data? if you carry this through to its logical extreme, they think you are talking about tia. you want to search all data that might have a terrorism nexus. some of it may be d.h.s. data, and where is the right balance? those are some unanswered questions. >> my time is up. i must say, and i think the whole admiral poindexter

brouhaha sent wrong messages. i thought it may have been because of his personal background. i thought he was asking reasonable questions. they may not have been perfect questions, but he was trying to push the technology to make it maximally helpful to us in our quest to start peep from -- people from doing this. >> yes, sir. there is no question that a human being is not going to be able to go through all that data. >> senator collins? >> i am going to yield to senator brown first because he has a scheduling conflict. >> thank you, senator, and mr. chairman, i appreciate it. i just had one quick question, probably to mr. healy. when you're making that recommendation to the president, and i am not sure in this is the appropriate vehicle to do just that, but do you recommend how the people who are actually caught trying to hurt us, do you make a recommendation as to how they should be treated in terms of prosecution or interrogation?

will there be that type of recommendation within what you are doing? >> no, sir. i was specifically asked to take a look at the watch listing standards and no-fly, the selectee, how that process worked, and that is where i'm focusing it. what you just asked is beyond me. >> who will be responsible for making those recommendation to the administration? >> i'm not sure, sir. i would defer that question, and i would like to get back to you, if i could. >> if you could, that would be great. senator, i appreciate you deferring, and thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. >> i think you performed a very important service today by reminding us that we cannot have profiles in our mind of what is terrorist looks like, and that a terrorist can use a young child or an elderly person in a wheelchair. we should all be reminded of

that bay the stories that broke in the news today where a blonde, green-eyed woman from pennsylvania turns out to be suspected of terrorist acts. so i think that is a very good reminder to all of us. i recently was returning from zurich and had to go through a full-pat-down. i thought what a waste. i have shown my i.d., it is clear who i am. why am i having to go through this? but the fact is that random quality of selecting people is important, and i think you have given us a good reminder of that today. i want to give you a chance today to respond to concerns that have been raised by various outside groups. i think one is the electronic privacy information center,

about the full body scans. i would like you to address not just the privacy concerns that have been raised, but also the health concerns. i happen to know that t.s.a. looked at the health concerns and did an analysis of the exposure to the radio waves, but i don't think the public at large knows that. so if you could comment on both those issues? >> yes, senator. first with respect to the privacy, from the very beginning when we started to test this new technology, we filed a privacy impact assessment, and we held a lot of meetings with privacy groups and various interest groups in our wide net of stakeholders. we have gone to the point where today, where we have this technology deployed, there is a

clear separation between the t.s.o. or the officer who is facilitating the passenger going through that technology and the actual officer who is seeing the actual image of that passengers. the two officers never overstep so that the officer with the passengers never sees the image of the packager in the technology, and the officer that is viewing that image is located in a remote viewing room. the standards for the officers who are viewing those images are very high. if they are -- they are not permitted to bring cell phones into the viewing area, and they are not permitted to take a picture. most importantly, the technology is set up so that the operator cannot store that image, they cannot copy it or transmit it to another work station. so we have taken a lot of measures from a privacy

standpoint. in addition, the passengers are advised it is optional. if they do not want to go through this technology, they can have alternative means of screening. the health and safety aspects of it were important to us from two standpoints. first, from the traveling public standpoint, for every passenger, as well as for our officers who would be near that equipment all day long, and we had a number of federal agencies, including the food and drug administration, look at the standards that the manufacturer certifies to in terms of health and safety. we also asked johns-hopkins university, their applied physics lab, to take an independent look at the technology and give us their independent assessment of its safety. in essence, for the two different types of technology, it is equivalent to less than two minutes of air time in an

airplane at full altitude, your exposure or less than 10,000 times your exposure when you are on your cell phone. so it is very, very minimal. you would have to fly 15,000 times a year to be exposed to anything that would reach the very baseline of a question in terms of the health and safety standards. >> thank you. that is very helpful testimony for us to have. mr. ago larry -- aguilar, i want to thank you for the extraordinary service we have had from a detailee, matt hannah from your agency, he has added to our knowledge of c.b.m., and we appreciate it. i want to talk to you about the screening computer program that

is known as the automated targeting system. that is intended to identify travelers for additional screening if they are not on the terrorist watch list. so again, it's part of this layered approach to security. now, following the christmas day attempted attack, d.h.s. started requiring passengers who are citizens or traveling from one of 14 countries to undergo additional physical screening before boarding a flight to the united states. what worries me about that approach is it seems to me to not really be risk-based. and to encourage terrorists to travel through other countries or use citizens of countries that aren't on the 14-country

list. i can understand why we would want to put yemen, for example, on that list, and that may make sense. but it seems to me that we know that terrorists are smart, and they are adapting cons tantsly. and when we advertise that these 14 countries are going to be subjected to additional screening, we just encourage them to go around that. why instead wouldn't we make increased use of the automated targeting system to identify high-risk travelers rather than doing this blanket approach? to identify high-risk travelers rather than doing this blanket approach? >> senator, you hit on something that is an absolutely critical to helping secure this nation and that is what you are

referring to is addressing the unknown. when we talk up the watch listing, when we talk about the biometrics, when we talk about the knowns, that is frankly in our world part of the easy part of the finding that people. what you're referring to is finding the unknowns, taking umar farouk for nitze beckham umar farouk abdulmataalab, had his father not come in with that piece of information he would have been completely unknown to us. but by utilizing the eighteen's system, the targeting system we utilize was taken into account tidbits of information that may or may not be in the tsdb. we've taken to be what might be known travel routes into the united states, origins, things of that nature. so that is managing risk. that is what that system is specifically used for in order to address the unknowns that might be coming into our country. we use that on a constant basis.

it has been very successful. now, as to the 14 countries, and i will leave the rationale for the 14 countries delineated to my partners from the tsa. but after 12:45 we need to do everything possible to ensure that not only the knowns and unknowns and any other gap could have been closed. and that is the rejection reason for the 14. but again, you've got something absolutely critical that we not forget about and that is the unknown trying to get into this country that we have absolutely no idea. we've just tidbits of information. we basically address by focusing our intelligence, buy focusing our efforts on what we do know of the modes, means or rationale as to how they try to get into this country. >> thank you. mr. chairman, just one closing comment if i -- >> go right ahead. i actually have a few more questions so if you want another

round -- >> fine. that sounds great. >> okay, good. thank you. in the last round of questions i asked about the ability to do a google-like search of a similar name were subject to cross all the networks but i wanted to ask all so we talked about this last time with mr. lehder and others who are here and this i didn't understand very well. i know that in the private sector there are some computer programs that don't search for the exact same name but have the capacity to make connections or words or topics. this case part of the frustration as i mentioned in my opening statement we knew from one intelligence source that there was a nigerian training

with al qaeda and the arabian peninsula. we had another intercepted suggested something might be happening out around christmas holidays. we had another intercepted demand only his first two names umar farouk, and then of course we had a father come into the embassy. so the question and the problem we have now is this enormous amount of data that he said the numbers are stunning, 10,000, and essentially new names suggested every day. more data collected primarily by the nsa every day it is in the library of congress. but so this is impossible for humans to sift through in a timely way. to your knowledge, are their systems, software programs that we can or should acquire that can make a stab at not just the same name everywhere bits of

information that a quick search might tie together? >> yes, sir and as i mentioned we are utilizing many tools and are always looking at others. the issue of alternative names is a relatively simple 1i think that probably all of us at this table have capabilities, resident in the department agencies that will deal with cultural differences and spellings and so forth so we've got that one of relatively liked. it does present problems when we are trying to do this on a massive scale and correlate with other data because now you have 100 different spellings of one man and they reach out and touch other data and now you have a false positive? absolutely. >> what about the case we had with umar farouk? is there a computer system that might precede a conceivably have picked out those similarities that i just mentioned, nigerian,

umar farouk, then the father comes in and says umar farouk abdulmataalab? >> if your tayler a query absolutely -- >> give me an example. sprick if you search on umar farouk and nigeria and allow it to use alternative spellings then it's an easy question. it was just as david indicated you know what you're looking for them the query is easy. >> we have the equipment to do that kind of search now the databases? >> that's correct. am i analysts -- am i analysts could have found that linkage if we were to make the queried. there are things, late and semantic indexing that would allow you to generate new knowledge and that is you can pour in many cables and they don't necessarily find a direct linkage but because they cannot learn if we are smart enough to program the algorithms they can connect pieces of information.

we are certainly experimenting with that as well and certainly the sort of next generation of analyst notebook kind of things which make pretty pictures and link people together. frankly any analyst will tell you that that is just the beginning. now you've got a tremendous amount of information and have to borrow down into one correlation between to individual points. >> okay. technology is taking us very rapidly so hopefully we can help to sift through all that information that helps to come on your desk every day to get commissioner aguilar, let me go back to the question about when you get the information about passengers coming on a plane but this business but a lot of times including with abdulmataalab we didn't have the information until he was on the plan. i wonder what you think about creating a rule that we thoroughly screen each flight each flight's passenger manifest

against all our data bases at least 24 hours if not longer before the airplane is set to depart understanding that not everybody will be on a database 24 hours before but most of the passengers probably will be. >> yes, sir. the more information we have available to less quickly is going to enhance our capabilities to affect the inte as i stated earlier, it doesn't give us all of the elements that we need. >> right. >> we are working with the civil aviation industry to try and get them to get us the information that will get to us up to 72 hours before so that we can start running the passengers against our systems. i believe you are aware also that prior to actual boarding 30 minutes before, we do get the full biological information of the passengers when they

either swipe their passport or the carrier provide us the batch information that will give us those capabilities. but to the degree that we can get more information as quickly as possible, it will be a tremendous enhancement to our capabilities to run against all the databases. >> i appreciate it now. so really you are pushing it now to see if you can get that information up to 72 hours before flight departure? >> yes. the p and r data, yes. we started 72 hours at 24, 8 and 1 hour before and then the other data 20 minutes before boarding. >> the question is whether you can get the efis data quicker. >> that is the data that is going to give us the full daily on the passengers on the manifest. >> please let us know if there is anything we can do to expedite the process. >> we will. >> i want to ask a final

question. it is my understanding -- and you arrived to this someone in your opening statement. on christmas day last year shortly after that northwest flight 253 landed in detroit and authorities began to investigate the incident, somebody at n.s.a. determined that pilots should be alerted to what authorities knew at that time. what i have been told was that t.s.a. alerted all trans-atlantic flights that someone had tried to light a combustible substance and that pilots should alert passengers that all items should be stowed one hour prior to arrival. it was sent by the f.a.a. alert system in the cockpit of every plane. i think two subsequent messages which contained some additional information were accept. i wanted to ask you two questions looking back, but also looking forward. and obviously a lot of this is

quick commendable. who at t.s.a. made the determination to send those particular alerts? and then my question looking forward, if my information is right, why was the decision made to send them only to the transatlantic flights? given the imper -- imperfect information we had about the flights, why didn't t.s.a. send them to all aircraft flying into, across the u.s.? >> i made the decision. i was on the call in the aftermath as we got word of the flight in detroit. we had f.a. affirm on the bridge call with t.s.a., and i made the decision to have f.a.a. notify those pilots. as the information was very rapidly coming into us, we did a very quick assessment of how

many flights for the next eight hours were inbound to the united states, and 128 of them were inbound from europe. it was my decision to notify those based on the intel that we had, based on the fact that this particular flight had come from europe. as part of our process after every one of these incidents, we do a hot wash and look at what should we do differently. we have already added it into our critical incident plan, that if we were to face another incident like that, we would notify additional carriers beyond those that we had in our window in those eight hours in that specific region. and it is one of the lessons learned from that day. >> very good. if that, god forebib -- forbid, happens again, you would notify carriers in the u.s. as well? >> yes. >> thanks for the lessons learned. >> the health care debate moves to the house budget committee

monday as committee members mark off health care legislation, we will have life coverage begins at 3:00 eastern on c-span 3, c-span radio and on our website at c-span.org. the budget meeting is part of an effort to put the mat tore a vote by march 18. c.q. today says democrats want to have the budget committee approve the bill under expedited reconciliation procedures. then the rules committee will meet on wednesday to work out the structure for the debate. house speaker nancy pelosi says she hopes to start debate on thursday with votes possible later in the week. stay tuned to c-span for the latest on the health care debate and visit our health care hub. you can read the legislation, see what the president and members of congress are saying, and join in the conversation yourself on twitter. you can find cost estimates for the bills and hundreds of hours of video from the house and senate debates, committee

harings, and other events. c-span's health care hub, c-span.org/health care. .

people have forgotten that the senate is involved. their problem is that there has to be trust. half i do not think that people trust nancy pelosi and harry reid in coming through with a payoff. >> stress from fellow democrats -- trust from fellow democrats? >> what they're going to do in addition to the senate bill being sent to the president, before they vote the one to make sure they will have this in their. -- there. that will go into the

recreation bill. how do we know that they will do that? it means that all of a sudden they have to be trusted. trusted to do it later rather than at the same time. i do not think that the level of trust is there. >> you are saying that the house bill will be defeated? >> the senate bill is before the house right now. it has to be passed as it is to get it through. there is a lot of opposition that it will be voting through. >> i would like to follow up on that. if the house passes a bill and there is a second bill that you are talking about, corrective, it will have to get through the senate with 61 votes. how successfully can republicans stop that bill from moving through on various points of warburg deaf >> it will be a problem -- various points? >> it will be a problem.

harry reid has to hold together eight democrats with him. when they start counting the democrats that took heavy hits during the recess, they will have a hard time doing that. >> do you think they could get to 51? >> stop and think about all the hysteria that took place during the august recess. people have not forgotten that. myself, i enjoyed it. republicans look like heroes. i have spoken to many democrats who will not say publicly what they say in private conversation. >> amerthe house has talked abot

reconciliation and these other solutions, the possibility of using rules to have the house vote without actually voting. is there a political ramification for democrats if they are using what seemed to be strong arm tactics to get this through? if so, how he made that an issue politically? -- how do you make that an issue politically? >> we do this for a living, we live this every day. all of the real people paying for this up here, they are back working full time. they cannot just have a vote on this. what is reconciliation? can you take a bill that is going to be a total change in policy and put it under reconciliation? most people say that that is trickery. going outside of the wheels to

get something passed that the american people do not want. going on outside of the rules to get something passed that the american people do not want. >> this entire issue of process, some say, will be something the public does not care about. >> i do not buy that. first of all, if they're going to like it, they are told it will do all of this stuff but it will not happen for four years but the cost is now. all of these years they are not getting benefits, again, i really think that the democrats are making a mistake. they are jumping on two things in the president is right there with them. the president said he did not care what anyone said, they were going to do the health bill and the cap and trade bill. to me that is politically very stupid. something americans do not

want, solidifying who they will vote for when these past. >> the house has done a cap and trade bill, the senate will clearly not be doing at any time soon. you have a bipartisan group working on something slightly different. does that change the way that you look at things at all? is there a way to do that on a sector by sector basis? >> you are probably talking to the wrong person. i was the 17 years ago, when i made the statement that the idea that co2 and methane was causing catastrophic global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the american people. that has not changed. if they want to accomplish what they want to accomplish, shutting down fossil fuels, you

had mccain, lieberman, warner, boxer, sanders, all of those bills. now you have got this thing with john kerry? they're all the same. look at the evaluation that was put on by the wharton school, mit, the cia. what would it cost america? somewhere between $3,000,000,000.-294966343 dollars every year. constituting the largest tax increase in the history of america. what do you get for it? the people understand. even lee said jackson says that if you pass it, it will not reduce co2. obviously. that is only the united states. china, india, mexico, they have no restrictions, so it would

increase co2. honestly, when i look at what little i have seen specifically from lindsay gramm and john kerry, there's nothing specific they're, but what they are trying to do is pick. they tried this before. start out with natural gas. the idea of cap and trade, if you stop to think about it, if your desire was to reduce co2 emissions, just put a tax on the emissions, right? that is what james hansen said, the only thing i've ever read with a month. why do they not do it? because people would then understand what it costs. cap and trade is just a way of making everyone thinking they are a winner. >> i forgot your question. [laughter] >> duties initiatives have any

impact on the ant -- do these initiatives have any impact on the environment? >> and know. everything since kyoto was just unilateral -- >> no. everyone since feet -- everything since kyoto was unilateral. barbara about -- barbara boxer, saying that we are going to accept these examples, finishing ourselves first, and everyone else will line up. >> is part of this not to get china and india to follow a certain set of standards? >> china and india are laughing at us. the best thing to happen to china would be for us to pass something unilaterally. they are still cranking out coal-fired generation plants every week. they are anticipating a lot of jobs coming from the united states to china. they will impose restrictions on themselves? not a chance. i spoke to these people when i

was in copenhagen for my famous two hour visit. >> senator kerry said that this is about creating jobs in a green economy and climate change legislation is along for the ride. the finding that could make you vulnerable? >> i do not believe that it is creating a new economy of jobs. right now we are leading in jobs in the specter -- spectrum where we are creating the most energy. right now we are dependent on coal for our generation. next in line as oil. and gas. we are starting to work on nuclear, something that is good. that would produce a lot of jobs. but green jobs, it sounds so good, but when we get specific, even barbara boxer cannot come

out with anything sellable in terms of increasing jobs. if they are successful, and keep in mind that the undersecretary of education said that until we do away with fossil fuels will never have enough resources concentration nonrenewable. to me that is like saying we will lose the jobs that are there today. >> lindsey graham reach across the aisle on climate change and guantanamo bay. he told "the washington post" that purity is replacing the principle of compromise. is this a risk for republicans, flat out refused to work with democrats on these big issues? >> it depends on the issue. let's concentrate on the two,

gitmo and cap and trade. he and i do not agree. we do not agree on most things. keep in mind, it was john mccain and lindsay gramm driving the effort on cap and trade. i hope that we have a chance to talk about gitmo, but on cap and trade, no matter what they do to it, it is a massive tax increase that does not reduce co2. this is not me speaking, this is the epa speaking. i think that maybe purity is not that bad. i think that the american people are on the side of purity. >> clearly you do not want to close guantanamo, that if it is not one place in the united states, it will be another. what is your solution to dealing with the people at guantanamo, in that graze owy zone?

of what is your solution for dealing with them going forward? >> a fair question. keep in mind, the ones that are left at guantanamo bay right now, gitmo, 200, they are the hard-core. they were disposed of in one way or another. they're estimating that 20% of those that were there that are released back to their country of origin are back in the battle trying to kill our soldiers. if those were the low hanging fruit, i was as close to them as we are to each other. the only thing that every one of those people wants to do is kill americans. you have two problems. the obsession of the president

on closing gitmo. when you ask the question, they talk about the torture. that is mind-boggling. terrorists want to kill us. in gitmo there has never been a documented case of waterboarding or serious types of torture. the biggest problem right now is of the city because they are eating too well. -- obesity, they are being treated so well, they're eating too much. a military tribunal costs $20 million. we do not have the facility in america. lindsey gramm, he said we had to build some kind of facility in

the united states. we can say that trouble and leave them in gitmo. >> we are handling the worst kinds of war criminals, but we have been able to incarcerate the worst kind, like the oklahoma city bomber. is this saying that the system will not work properly? criminal or war criminal? of is there a way to dispose of them properly in our prison system? to handle these folks? >> i know this issue, i know that when you have a terrorist, they're not criminals, they're detainee's. you try to prosecute those

people into our system in the united states, the rules of evidence are different. they're not read their work miranda rights, these things that people have been complaining about. people have come to the conclusion that the court system will lead to a correctly, and it will have to be a military tribunal. that is what they talked about in the united states. terrorists are in the job of training people to be terrorists. then they end up -- it will not work, it has to be terrorism. by the way, one less thing, early on the president of the united states, in an effort to

get these terrorists into the united states, he found 17 places in america. one of those was in my state of oklahoma. i went down there. i spoke to sergeant major carter. he wanted to know -- she wanted to know what was wrong with the people in washington, she said it would not work there. gitmo has served us well. one of the few places america has like that, why get rid of? i do not think it will work.

the american people, people do not want them here. how many states in the legislature have already passed it? i do not want them in my state of oklahoma, i am like those people. >> is the senate blocking what is needed? >> we have already done that. we were the authors, it was not all republicans, saying that we would not appropriate any money to allow the transfer or temporary housing of these people to come into the united states. a place where we can vote, it will not happen. >> making a deal with the white house over khalid sheikh mohammed, do you think of that would be successful? will there be republican support? >> i would not think so.

>> something that your former house colleagues are doing, you're marks, democrats said they did not want to see any for-profit your marks, saying that it will lead have much of an effect. i wonder about your house republican colleagues. what are your thoughts on that? you have been different from senator colburn, your home state colleague, talk about where you think that debate is headed and what the house republicans had done? >> i wish you had not asked that. i have a lot of conservative friends. keep in mind, i took on global warming seven years ago. for the first six years i was the worst person on the planet. now everyone understands and i am a good guy. this is a phony issue. your marks, stop using them.

article one, section 9 of the constitution, clearly says that it is the legislature's responsibility, that is what we are supposed to do. authorize and appropriate. all of a sudden we say that we are not going to authorize or appropriate? if we do not do it, it automatically goes to the executive department. read the james madison papers. they propose, we dispose. we have heard that many times. if we kill an earmark or an appropriation and it does not face 1 cents, allah does is go back to the president. there is an interesting article on the hill today about lobbyists and the unelected

bureaucrats that are doing this. i think it is educating them on our responsibility. keep in mind, when you run for office, you have an oath to uphold the constitution. i would hope that most people realize two things. i am a conservative. last week was rated by the national journal as the no. 1 most conservative member of the senate. we are supposed to be defending america, we are suppose to be doing that. i do not want to give barack obama one more sense that he already has control over -- that is what happens when you try to kill earmarks. he will make that decision, not congress. >> should congress be taking a more active role in determining where the dollars go?

does congress abdicate by not be your marking more? talking about what they should be spending across the board? >> we are talking about non- discretionary spending. earmarking is 1.5%. i am concerned about the rest of it. that is why i introduced a bill to look at. this bill does what obama said we wanted to do. weeding out non-discretionary spending. i looked at that, thinking that is an increase from last year. it went up 20%. so, i felt we should bring it back. i introduce the same bill, saying we should treat it at the 2008 level.

bat saved just under $1 trillion over 10 years. we are going to push that. i will try to get some democrats to support it. that is the discussion against the point i am making, that if we shirk our constitutional responsibilities and do away with any kind of appropriations on our part, that will be shifted to the president, you have obama plus a bureaucrat making the decision. >> clearly congress is trying to make some effort to show that they are addressing the debt. is this debt commission going to have any effect on reducing the debt and deficit? >> it is a distraction. you put together these bipartisan things, people saying that they will study the issues. you do not have to study the issues. just do not spend in the areas where we should not be spending.

that is why the system works well. it does not take a rocket scientist to say blame the republicans. one of the worst votes, in my opinion, was october 1, 2008. the bailout bill that gave $700 billion to unelected bureaucrats with no accountability. >> did you vote against that? >> yes, but not many did. i was lonely. obama took the reins and all of a sudden we had $787 -- $787 billion in stimulus. less than 3% actually stimulated. roads, highways, bridges. barbara boxer joined me, she tried to quadruple the amount of money in that bill. things that would take care of a crumbling infrastructure. in oklahoma, not long ago we had

a bridge just start falling down, it killed one lady, a mother of two. that is what we are supposed to be doing up here. we are not supposed to be going through this social re- engineering. we are supposed to defend america. susan, i positioned myself on afghanistan when that legislation came out. i knew that -- i knew what he would do to the military. he terminated our fifth generation fighter. he terminated the third site in poland that would defend the eastern half the united states. he did all of that, and i did not hear that he was disarming america. we have elected a person who is going to go down as the most anti-military president in

history. he has all of these social programs that are costing us more. i have 20 children and grandchildren. they will be paying for all of this. >> how is he doing? >> first of all, he is spending us into a situation that will be very difficult to recover from. i honestly believe, and most people believe, that the house will go republican in the november election. i kind of think that the senate will as well. we will have to make sure that we do not forget about this stuff. going back and undoing as much of the damage as has been done. to give him a grade, it depends on who you ask. if you ask me, someone who is considered the most conservative

republican in the branch, that we have left the role of our government and are reducing our defense systems, what he is doing right now is clinton's -- the same thing that clinton did. remember, he reduced the level of defense by 40%. the same as jimmy carter. we need to undo those things. the only way that we cannot get it done, you cannot change or judicial appointments. that worries me most. >> senator mccain has overlapped with the president of the military committee, cutting some of those programs you mentioned out. would your chairmanship be different? as a follow-up, would you like to see him winning reelection,

senator mccain? i know he is getting a conservative challenge. >> i support the people running republican at this point. keep in mind, if the republicans took over, i would be the chairman of the environment and public works committee. the largest jurisdiction of any of the committees. if done properly, it could promote a strong economy. taking of the unnecessary regulations. i would rejoice in being able to do that. of course, when we became a minority, i was the ranking member. barbara boxer and i, the only thing that we agreed on was infrastructure. >> do you support senator mccain for reelection? >> yes. >> is there more there? >> no.

what i want is a republican majority. to do that, i remember what i thought we could get one before these changes took place. at that time we need 11 seats. now we need tens seats with 14 possibilities. times have changed. >> will you campaign for senator mccain? >> he went along with carl levin and the president on everything except the one issue. >> will you campaign for senator mccain? >> we are not really good friends. >> calling up on environmental issues, there is a bill in congress, one of which would strip the epa of its powers to regulate greenhouse gases, which they now have and are ready to act upon. the latter bill has a far greater chance of moving.

i know you support the first bill, would you vote for the second? >> i would. but you are getting into something that is extremely significant. what the president has said is that we know you will not vote for cap and trade, i give up, so we have to do with regulations. we will make a finding saying that co2 is a pollutants. and we will throw it in there, then we will regulate it. anticipating that that happen, about three days before copenhagen, we have lisa jackson saying that we would come up with and endangerment finding. i knew that she was going to. to do that, we have to depend on science. what science will you depend on? >> primarily, she said, itcc.

who got us into this entire global warming thing? the united nations, forming the itcc, which has been completely discredited. i told her that now that she had done her endangerment finding, by her own admission the science of the itcc been totally discredited. that is a conversation stopper. how do you respond? lisa merkowsky, that would be a good idea if she has the votes. jay rockefeller, that would probably be stalled. there are 13 lawsuits already ready to be filed.

i can see the conservatives doing what the liberals were doing this year when we have the house and senate in the white house. everything was stalled, like the clear skies pact. this side can do the same thing. i think that what jay rockefeller is attempting to do, that will be done anyway. >> you have called this the big lie. he was telling the allies? >> in reference to what? >> the global warming issue. >> clearly the itcc. the hollywood elite, michael more, george soros, the alarmists, they are perpetrating this thing. what is their motivation? a lot of people, extremists on the left, extreme environmental groups, they are out there

blowing up construction sites. many of them just do not want progress. they do not want buildings and this type of thing and they are making it more difficult to keep the machine going. there are also trying to do away with the energy we are using to drive america. if you take away all the bills, how do you describe this machine called america until this time that major renewable will work? in the meantime, you have got to keep america ready. we are in a competition. look at china right now. >> some of your critics have said that the document that you put forward a reference in global warming has 400 experts listed and they say that some of these folks are paid for or associated with oil companies.

how do you respond to the idea that people argue against global warming have something in it for themselves? >> their question. obviously the finger is over 700. go to my web site, and i hope some of the people will maybe by now look out -- look up the web site. about five years ago by listed 770 people that were scientists, ph.d.'s. you can go through them and find five or six in every industry in america. ah, oil industry. you know? the oil industry is not bad. these people run america. as you might know, my state of oklahoma is one of the largest producers of natural gas. and i am all for them. >> you have made the economic

and scientific argument against global warming. the science is bad. and the economic argument, shifting away from traditional fuels will be putting ourselves out of work. which is the stronger argument? the better one? if you had to go with one? >> you do not get much of this in the united states, but the u.k. telegraph, a large london publication, said that after examining what happened on climategate, it was the clear the worst scientific scandal of the generation. people all over the world are saying that. "time magazine" was trying to make people think that the world was coming to an end in the 1970's because there was another ice age coming. what was that famous one last year? the last polar bear?

now they're saying of the science was not good. i would probably say -- i would have to say equally the economic argument and the scientific argument. [laughter] >> you have been critical of the president, get your colleague, tom coburn, has a close relationship with a myriad what has left -- what has led to that? >> you would have to ask tom. >> thank you for being here, senator james inhofe. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> coming up, senator bob corker and chris dodd on financial regulations legislation. after that, a house hearing on highway safety. >> obama and his socialistic

ideas, deciding the salaries of the bank's, this is a life lesson in progress right now for conservatives. >> tonight, michelle eastern, founder and president of the clear blue policy institute in an effort to promote conservative women in leadership roles, tonight on a "q&a." the health-care debate moves to the house budget committee on monday as committee members marked up the legislation. live coverage beginning at 3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3, c-span radio, and on the web site at c- span.org. the budget meeting as part of an effort to put the matter to a vote by march 18. "congressional quarterly" says that rules committee will be meeting on wednesday to work out the structure for the debate. nancy pelosi says that she hopes to start the debate on thursday

with votes possible later in the week. stay tuned to c-span for the latest, and visit the health care of. visit the legislation, see what the president and members of congress are saying, joined in the conversation yourself on twitter. you can find cost estimates and hundreds of hours of video from the floor debate, committee hearings, markups and other events. c-span.org/healthcare. >> senator bob corker says that the health-care debate has forced chris dodd to push forward with financial regulation legislation. he expressed disappointment with the decision, citing a number of unresolved issues with the legislation. he speaks with reporters at the capital for about 35 minutes.

>> thanks for coming out. yesterday was a bizarre day. by began today feeling like we are on the 5 yard line -- i began the day feeling like we are on the 5 yard line. i never realized that health care would affect financial regulations. the biggest deal i ever did in my life took one year and 10 months. lots of ups and downs. when the person you are dealing with is under stress, any time you need to call and pick things

up, yesterday morning i knew that chairman bododd was feelina lot of pressure. i told him that we were on the 5 yard line, we can get it done. just move ahead. he said your right, we can, and that you have been a great partner. we missed each other today, and at 3:00 we finally met. we met privately. he made me aware that with reconciliation coming, he felt the need to go ahead, regardless of where we were in negotiations, put forth a bill on monday. obviously that is very disappointing. in a stand the pressure he is under.

let me say this, i have immensely enjoyed working with chairman dodd and his team. his that has negotiated with us in absolute good faith. there has not been an issue yet, not one impediment that we have not been able to overcome. not a single one. the fact is that on the issue that all of you have focused on the most, we were there. what will be happening -- let me go further. i have enjoyed this immensely. what has happened over the last 30 days is what we came to the senate to do. we have laughed, we have debated. we got to the 5 yard line.

even though yesterday i was made aware that he had to go ahead, i still plan to work with him. we met with his staff today. they were in shock. i want to thank the staff. thinking about a bill that is long and substantive, you realize we do not have a committee staff working on this, but they have been incredible. they know this bill better than any step in the senate. they will continue to play a role in shaping its in a bipartisan way. i am obviously disappointed. a lot was at stake. i still think it is important in this country that we get a financial regulation bill. the thing that is sad about this, this really is a jobs

bill. our financial markets need predictability. it does not take but a few phone calls to leaders in the financial world for them to tell you, just produced. we would like to have a good bill, we would like to know where the country is going, we want to know the rules of the road so that we can get on with business because many of them are hoarding cash. in fairness, there is no question fifth the white house politics on health care has kept us from getting to the goal line. no question. again, i have truly enjoyed working with chairman chris

dodd. mark warner has been one of the best partners you can imagine. i know that he is disappointed. judge read, jack reed, some of the smartest in the senate, they are not quite finished. in fairness, it might take them little while. we had an energy hearing this week where the sec and the ferc were still debating on who should have certain jurisdictions. my sense of what we should do in the senate is get things right. it is important for us, before we pass legislation, to get it through this weekend, except for derivatives, we probably could have gotten it right. introducing a truly bipartisan bill. by the way, i always felt that the committee's, in major ways,

could amend these bills. i think that much of the public discourse around this bill -- by the way, i feel very free to talk about policy issues today. i no longer feel constrained. [laughter] in fairness, i think it was happening was that members on the left were getting very nervous about what was going happen. i think that what chairman chris dodd will do is introduce a bill on monday that is a bid to the left of where we were, ok? trying to make sure that he can get as much as he can i am aware democratic support. hopefully what he will do is move to the right.

having a better course of action would have been to go down the middle of the road. to put a positive on this the fact is that now all of my colleagues -- by the way, i want to say something. this began as a very awkward situation in the first week or so. my republican colleagues have become very excited. i think they have seen the senate working the way it is supposed to work. they have seen breakthroughs in negotiations on a bill there were just not going down partisan lines. yesterday i met with all of our republican members at 4:00. there was a lot of engagement.

they saw that we were talking about actually bipartisan bill. i hope that continues. the bill is much better than it was as introduced in december. remember, i pleaded with them to not go forward with a partisan markup. others did the same. that bill was not amendable. there was no way to do it and get it right. one of the times -- one of the positives that will come out of this is that this bill will be more in the middle of the road. it will not be where it could of been. basically what happened yesterday, kind of like you are writing a column and you were three-fourths of the way through, you would just stop, that would be the way that this

bill would be on monday. this probably does not play well to my republicans in tennessee, but i consider chris dodd to be my friend. i consider his staff to be stand up people that were great to negotiate with. i know that our staff plans to continue working through. i hope that we get a bipartisan bill. i want to say this. this will be the first disagreeable thing i have said to chairman chris dodd. this is a very important bill. i cannot imagine a committee member, republican or democrat, passing a bill with this type of substance in net out of a

committee in one week. i think that that would be a travesty. i know that this goes against what he wishes to happen. chairman chris dodd will talk to you about the schedule. that is his prerogative. if the senators can pass a bill of substance out of committee in a week, 1200 pages, full of substance with a real fact on the financial industry, then the state that elects them might as well send robots. i hope that people on both sides of the aisle will look at this and will really debate it in committee and get it right. i can tell you this, i stand ready. i spoke to mark warner a few moments ago. we were obviously both disappointed.

even the language we working on, it will not quite get completed in the way we had hoped. we have made a lot of progress on capital issues. one of the things that we need to deal with in a bill like this -- by the way, i am so proud, being honest, about many of our republicans. they were on the fence and they came down the middle of the road to meet half way. what i hope will happen, and i think that americans certainly know about the people in this country that were taken advantage of. i think that a lot of people in america realize that a lot of people borrowed money that had no business borrowing money in the first place. i hope that we will look at

underwriting standards in this bill. maybe the fact that there were loans made that should never have been made, people borrowing money that never should have, that we will deal with that also, as it is very important as it relates to the bill. with that, i look forward to working with chairman chris dodd. all of the guys on our side, all of the guys on their side. i will get a good night's sleep tonight, dusting off, and i will come back and continue to do what the people of tennessee elected me to do, giving me a six year lease to do it, continuing to work with people across the aisle. thank you for letting me talk so long.

i have no idea what order to take questions in. >> is it possible that chris dodd will push this through on a partisan basis? what is your expectation? >> i think that he sincerely wants to be bipartisan in this bill. i think he feels under pressure to try to pass out a bill before reconciliation hits the floor. >> the white house? >> i do not speak about things i do not know about. let me tell you this, i know that the elephant in the room is reconciliation. trying to get a bill out of committee prior to that time. look, the fact of the matter is that i think he is a victim of health-care policy.

>> what was left in those last 5 yards before you reach the goal? >> obviously there were areas of risk and retention, working through some of the details. many of you read a headline this morning about the fact that credit is starting to percolate again. one of the things we need to be careful of as we look at risk retention is the unintended consequence of shutting down the commercial market. we are trying to work through some issues there. in a backhanded way we are trying to work through the issue from before. if you have to retain risk, maybe you do not if you are sliding a mortgage on a 15% down payment. maybe you create the incentive

for people to write more, like the kind in canada and other places, where home ownership is equal to ours and they do not have the defaults that we have. we have issues that we're working through with mark and others on resolution. the big piece that was not ready was evidence with judd gregg and jack reed. very bright, very complex. something that we absolutely have to get right. the devil is in the details. there were member issues coming up. whenever a vehicle is one that is moving, proxy access was always going to be an issue. i know the senator schumer -- we had actually agreed to look at

some of the government issues he put forth. in fairness, on access that was alarming. it concerns us greatly about activist groups getting involved with the work that needed to be done. let me say this, no roadblocks. there has not been a single issue yet that we have not been able to work through. i called timothy geithner this morning and thank him for the way the treasury worked with us to talk us through these issues, talking us through the afternoon at 4:30. they have been tremendous partners. i have got to tell you, trying to resolve these issues. >> [inaudible] >> i still think that we will get there.

i hope that we will get their. there are four titles in this bill that are very important. the systemic council and gathering data, returning information with weather warnings, this is not war and peace. absolutely knowing that you have an orderly liquidation of large companies is important to get back in the american psyche. something that republicans and democrats are united by. let me say this, if you are a large company and you fail and you choose not to go through bankruptcy, you will go to a very painful liquidation. derivatives are very important. think about what happened with derivatives. having a regime that causes

people to put collateral up against -- would ag have happened if we had appropriate derivatives? i think it we will get there. i am disappointed with where we are today. i am equally energize to work with the chris dodd said and shall be staff. i think we will get there, but it will be far messier. when we are willing to grind out every issue, that is when you get a good piece of legislation. >> i have a question on the ratings agencies and the last part of your comment. cra seem to be, and i do not know what people said, the fdic

and the fed, most lending [unintelligible] >> i did not say anything about cra. >> that is what i am asking. >> no, no, when you look at what happened in the financial crisis, starting out with the bad mortgage, whenever you have low rates -- the value of real- estate inflates, an inverse relationship. with the ability to multiplied with derivatives. at the bottom of the pyramid you

had mortgages that were underwritten badly. not as far as society or anything like that, thank you for clarifying. i am not sure that we know enough to do the right thing on the ratings, but at present we have a painful clause's four ratings agencies. i know that the house wrote that out of the code, and i am now saying i am opposed, but we would have had a very big liability placed on credit ratings agencies that would have caused them to pay much more attention to what they are doing. >>