examiners you would need? --- >> do you know how many more examiners you would need? >> approximately 50. >> and how long would it take you to get rid of the back of the experts we would have to employ full-time those polygraph examiners. there are fairly rigid requirements associated with not allowing contractors to test a full-time government employees or government applicants. >> ok, that 60% is the alarming to me. >> it is to me as well, sir. . .

>> this requires a national polygraph exam. while we are constantly on the lookout for this, i don't know the exact number of times that we've done this in the bureau but i know it has occurred. >> we see charts about how many arrests but one thing the subcommittee is trying to get a handle on -- do you have a sense

of it being a percentage for a number or a likelihood of recurrence? can you give the subcommittee a sense of how pervasive this problem is? >> i can give you an example that may get to the answer we need. without a specific number, you look at the actual cases where we have had interdictions, the crispin case in my opening statement. this person was paid over $5 million in bribes. when you back into that amounts, you quickly figure out my business standpoint exactly how valuable it is in a drug- trafficking organization to get their goods across the border. i can extrapolate from this example that it is significantly pervasive theme in the crispi.

>> what was ms chopped crispin's title? >> she was a cdp officer and she was able to clear vehicles coming through her checkpoint without inspection, knowing ahead of time which vehicles they were and which ones to wave through and these vehicles that it to the country with no inspection of all. >> was this going on before she was caught or do you know how much -- how long this went on? >> this went on for many years. prior to 2003 she was suspected of being involved in smuggling operations. she was panel pass so police officer who we believe was actually recruited -- elpaso police officer who we believe was actually recruited to become a customs officer.

>> you mentioned that you have had 103 arrests and that chart reflects that. does a chart like this tell the whole story? you have some investigations and some arrests but can we look at the chart and say that this problem is getting worse and that this is something that if we do not get on top of this, we will have a major problem and it will get out of control? >> that chart was created by ice is a good insight as to what our current status. it reflects the number of those persons who have actually been arrested dhs and other agencies

participating in a collaborative way to accomplish that. those of the persons who have been arrested. those of the ones we have become aware of. our rate concerns are how many other persons are in our work force or have gained access to our work force through the hiring initiatives that are not recorded by that chart. the chart would be a good indicator of how many might be in our work force. >> let me get your impression on this -- is this a bigger problem with new hires, that people may be intentionally trying to infiltrate and do this on behalf of the drug cartels or is it the existing people in the field that overtime get corrupted? >> i think both of those scenarios have been determined. we know from our analysis that those persons who have been arrested at the beginning of my

assignment cvp which began in june, 2006, the vast majority of those persons arrested had nearly 10 years of service. those members began to change significantly as cvp's hiring initiatives came about. we see a mobile universe of the data where there are two groups of persons being charged with corruption. they include the more senior person but they also include people who came to cvp the purpose of being corrupt and taking advantage of the authorities they had as an employee to further their pre- existing involvement in criminal organizations. >> the polygraph program and the careful review of information we obtained through interviews following the exams has given us an insight to the number of persons who may have seized on our hiring initiatives to gain access to cvp.

>> you mentioned a figure of $5 million in the crispin case -- what is typical? how much money does it take to corrupt a border patrol officer? >> we we find that some are willing to compromise their authorities and sell out their allegiance to those that would harm our country in any way they can endure feller agents for remarkably small amounts of money. at the same time, some of the employees appear to have been -- appear to have done so after being offered best sums of money3 -- vast sums of money. there is a wide an array of sums. >> we talked about polygraphs

but cvp and all federal law- enforcement agencies to a periodic background check on their current and employees. it depends on the agency and the status of the employee. how are you in terms of your checking the force to have in place now? >> to be honest, we are challenged to keep up with the pace of the periodic re- investigations that are required once every five years. we have a backlog of periodic re-investigations and we are doing everything we can to improve the quality of those investigations while at the same time keep pace with the numbers that come due every year. >> you mentioned a challenge and backlog. give me a sense of health of -- how far behind you are.

>> today, over 10,000 of our employees are overdue to have the re-investigation concluded. there will be an additional 9000 by the end of this year. it is an excellent tool to deter -- detect corruption of the work force. >> how many do you think you can get done this year? >> at this point, our current budget situation does not allow for us to hopefully reach that 19,000 number. the goal is to accomplish as many as we can. if we can accomplish half that maybe what our budget situation currently allows for this calendar year. >> half of the 19,000 -- >> yes, some of the answer results in how many persons are hired by cvp the remainder of

this calendar year. the same personal security resources that to background checks on employees' conduct those're-investigations. if we hire substantially this year, we will have to divert some of those resources from. re-investigations to do new employee background investigations. >> give us a sense of what you're all this backlog is. if you have 19,000, are you four years behind on some people or do you know? >> that was the case at the beginning of this fiscal year. the hiring of cvp employees increased drastically in the last years of calendar year 2009. we were able to catch up and we had investigations that were one year or 18 months overdue. >> as far as the polygraph, how

many employees do you get that do not pass these periodic background checks? >> a small number of the re- investigations, less than 1% of the%re-investigations as their conducted today have serious integrity issues. >> you might also need to improve the quality and thoroughness of the background checks? >> this involved into a continuous monitoring situation. we would like to have the resources to continuously monitor our work force, increasing and decreasing the intensity of that personal security investigation depending on what that employee is doing and what their assignment is and whether they are assigned to a high-risk environmental and whether they have received information and whether there is an integrity issue.

>> ok, do you have a sense of how many new personnel you have to have in order to get to the level of strength you need to be? >> right now, the vast majority of our re-investigations have been conducted by contractors. we had to recently reduce personnel. to maintain our own investigative source and eliminate the use of contractors would require several hundred individuals dedicated to doing. re-best occasions. periodic re-investigations.

we had to release 99 investigators in the last pay period. >> and that is because of budget issues? >> yes. mr. perkins, we talked about the multi-agency meetings that to have. could you tell the subcommittee more about that, please? >> presently, we have 12 border corruption task forces established. these are operational entities that involved agents from the agencies at this table as well as the transportation security administration. they were up in west the southwest border and on the northern borders of the country. they worked cases involving

corruption along the border, particularly in the southwest border involving drug trafficking. they also investigate what ever else might come along whether it is state, federal, local law enforcement individuals, members individualscvp or the like. we are trying to stay ahead of the curve as much as we can. all of the investigations that i oversee, these are among the best as forest cooperative efforts and sharing information and people working together along the border. we are looking to expand those to other points of entry around the united states. right now, we're focusing on the southwest. >> how often do they meet face to face? is this more of an e-mail or conference call think? ing? do they share information and

spend time with each other and is the federal side helping the state side and the county is helping the federal and all that? >> without a doubt. it is vital to have those kind of relationships to leverage the resources. we have a different expertise as we can bring to the table. without a doubt, that is vital. >> in those task forces, are you seeing evidence of state and local corruption, as well? >> yes, sir, that is the case. one of the things we are trying to do with everybody's budgets, we have to work and live within them. in the 2010 appropriation, we were able to receive additional bodies to fight gang violence across the u.s.

instead of parsing these out across the u.s. in little pieces, we decided to go where we thought we could make a major impact. we went to the southwest border and we charged our agents to help place an entire squad into a field office to address a particular issue we've . we wanted them to address gang violence, public corruption, and money laundering so it was a joint effort. we have identified two of the three officers from the squad that we are going forward. we are trying to use that type of information that all -- that addresses gang violence but addresses state and local corruption along the border, also. >> this could next question might be sensitive so if you

cannot answer it, i understand. when you hear a story about corruption on the border and problems with drugs, guns, money, etc. coming in and out would be terrorism. are you seeing any evidence of terrorists tapping into this and coming into the country? >> what we are trying to identify is when you step back and look at individuals, if they are willing to take across a carload of marijuana, cocaine, or illegal aliens, they might want to ferry across a terrorist or something else. it is all related. on the northern border in the

past, components attempted to smuggle in -- components of an explosive device were tried to smuggle into the country and that was interdicted. we are prepared for that. we expect that as possible and we are doing what we can with this effort to interdict those potentialities. >> thank you very much. mr. frost, let me do a follow-up with you. we have talked about customs and border protection. can you give us a sense of ice and tsa and other agencies in terms of frequency of corruption? >> the numbers for ice and cvp are quite different.

their mission is different and a number of employees is different. they are at about half in terms of arrests and case investigations. ice also includes the element includesice that deals with detainees and alien detainee's and transportable, individuals. cis, from a homeland security standpoint, our -- is our area of most concern. immigration benefits are such a valuable commodity to enemies of the united states whether they are drug trafficking organizations or other persons that would do us harm and the

ability of lower level employees to make decisions on immigration benefits is disproportionate, similar, i would say, to cvp's authorities at the border where you have -- your average employee making decisions about whether someone can come in the country. certainly, with immigration benefits, the impact is even more lasting than profound. >> do you have a sense of how these agents in the various agencies of how they are first approached? if they are working and doing their job, how did they go from point a to point b in terms of

being corrupted? >> we have compared it to the espionage-related corruption techniques where organized criminal groups look for vulnerable employees. it may be someone that they already have a social relationship with. people like to say on the southwest border that the river is just a river. there is a lot of commerce, family and other interaction between people on both sides of the border. the same is true on the canadian border where dhs employees often go to entertainment or have meals or go for tourism. recruiters try to target people

that are vulnerable or people that they know, people who are willing to talk about their work and then they assess those people and look for those who have obvious vulnerabilities, who may be prone to infidelity or alcohol abuse and then they target them and begin a relationship, a further relationship that starts with small favors and expands until they are committed to these levels of corruption that we believed our traitorous. , in some cases. >> that is very concerning. besides polygraphs and background checks that they are supposed to have every five

years, what do you do try to monitor your work force in all your various agencies? >> within the department, there is internal affairs components both internalcvp , ice opr and the other agencies. we work closely with those internal affairs components to monitor those administrative- type cases. from all our perspectives, administrative-type cases are importuned tells, if you will, of employee misconductñ+, a leaking false it starts with a dread. -- faucet starts with a drip.

>> this raises another question that we have not talked about and that is mexico's commitment to supporting the efforts of these drug cartels. this is for the panel at large and anyone who wants to answer. what is your sense of mexico's level of determination and commitment to get these cartels under control and break them up however they do that under mexican law? what is your sense of their commitment level? >> speaking from the bureau's perspective, we have a good relationship with our colleagues on the mexican side. we have agents that are stationed and work in mexico. from the drug enforcement

administration, they have the lead in working those matters. we do receive a great deal of cooperation from the mexican government. obviously of late, a number of drug trafficking organization leaders have been captured or killed in the last six months which has caused a destabilization in the area down there. that is sorted itself out now. the mexican government is attempting to push harder and try to further destabilize these organizations and break them into components that could be dealt with directly. from the bureau's standpoint, we enjoyed a good relationship with the mexican government and the sharing of information. >> mr. perkins is very correct -- the lebanese and -- the level

of violence from the other agencies who have human intelligence assets, the level of violence down there is very bad. it causes the local government closer to the border to make some very difficult decisions about at what level and how they can cooperate with us in trying to stem this smuggling effort. >> i assume they help the amount of drugs are smuggled through the air? ]5ñor docjy they all come in ve? >> i think it is a combination of land, sea, and air.

i don't have the exact percentage. >> one of the questions i have and this is more of an internal question is -- i know you have ig's and i know you have internal affairs and different agencies that have different structures and different personalities and turf. how are the agencies doing, in your view, internally in terms of making sure that these cases are being handled properly within the agency and if they need to work with another agency and that is being done. how was that handled internally? >> i think we are making great strides. we have to recall that the

department of homeland security is relatively new. we are continuing to define our roles within the department. the best news of this is that we all want the same thing. we are all dedicated to stopping this and to locking up the bad guys and i'm very confident that minor issues between agencies are things that will always occur and that we will always be able to work it out as long as we have that same goal. >> do you have any comment on that? >> i think we need to continue to work really hard and better together at each and every level. previously i mentioned the fbi-

led border corruption offices. having all the agencies involved and working well in that environment is the right response. working in genuine full partnerships in an atmosphere where you know there is redundant verification of information is being shared that all available resources are being brought to bear in a court midway is the only way forward. i believe that all of us sitting at the table and other agencies need to bring to bear all our resources working in a highly career ladder of way. -- collaborative way. resources being what they are, if we are working in a perfectly harmonious way, we need to. >> still work to be done there? >> i believe so. >> everybody has mentioned that you need more